A rare '10'.

Rating: 10/10 (12 April 2012)

Patton is quite simply one of the best American movies ever made. The script is a marvel, managing to create an intimate portrait of someone who strode a grand path through one of history's most important sagas, and the performances are wonderful and unflinching, warts and all. Patton's character flaws as well as his merits impacted on the events and people around him, and this movie has a rare ability to show this.
To tell the story of the man, the legacy, the myth and the moment and to do it with such cinematic panache, such stunning visuals; to create such an incredible visual landscape of literal history and at the same time a symbolic journey into one person's mind and beliefs and to see how all of this played into what he accomplished, good and bad is a marvellous and rare achievement. Patton becomes, like a great literary character, defined by his contradictions: a modern warrior obsessed with the past and his possible past lives; deeply religious, yet deeply profane; a master of details who often watched seemingly insignificant events unravel his private and professional ambitions.
* mild spoiler *
The final shot of Patton staring at a windmill like a modern Don Quixote is at once both poignant and telling. like the whole film, it is great cinema and great biographical history.