Still the finest biopic of all time!

Rating: 10/10 (20 November 2002)

Buck Turgidson. Ebeneezer Scrooge. Bert Gordon. Georgie Patton. What do these characters have in common?
You know.
George C. Scott's Oscar winning (albeit refused) role as General George S. Patton was the performance he will be remembered by, despite a career full of wonderful characterizations. He captured Patton's sensitivity, anger and rage, emotionality and wilyness like no other actor has ever captured any other's character.
No less an authority than Omar Bradley, played by Karl Malden and acting as Technical Advisor, said Scott got Patton spot-on, except that his gruff baritone was several octaves lower than Patton's tenor.

Franklin Schaffner never topped his direction of this film -- although he came close in The Day of the Jackal. MacArthur? Fuggidaboudit.

The battle scenes are good -- great, even, given the style of the times. (Not realistic, of course, next to Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers, but still exciting, loud and flashy. And what more do you really want from a battle scene?)
The history is quite accurate -- the soldier slapping scene, condensed from two incidents, was almost word-for-word how it happened, according to several secondary sources. The subplot involving German lieutenant Steiner is gratuitous, but gives the viewer some details on Patton's character and biography that might have made the movie appreciably longer if shown. And it was a clever device to show the progress of Third Army, when casualties and numbers of towns taken are toted up.
This film is based almost entirely on Francis Coppola's screenplay, and an excellent one it is. Coppola got The Godfather based, I think, more on this screenplay than his direction of Finian's Rainbow.
I believe Scott's performance will be long remembered as one of the all-time great film performances.