Mel Gibson : The Patriot Under Fire

Rating: 10/10 (12 May 2007)

Recently George W Bush shocked a sedate audience in the White House by thanking Queen Elizabeth II for the assistance the British gave in celebrating American independence back in 1776. The shock on Her Majesty's face and the stunned awe that spread over the gathering tell it all. Mr Bush maybe a little short on his history: the American Revolution was a grisly spectacle which lasted eight full years until the last of the Red Coats departed.
The story of the seminal event still rankles Merry Olde. When this film was released as Mel Gibson's magnum opus, the English couldn't keep a stiff upper lip. The Independence Day the epic The Patriot, was scorned as "Gratuitously anti-British" and a Hollywood vision of "excessive violence is all too real," Brits say Mel Gibson emerged from playing the Scottish rebel Wallace as a stock anti-British character. Seemingly all the sneering, smirking, evil villains speak the Kings English.
Certainly, The Patriot's considerable emotional force stems from sheer rage, an unforgiving anger, but as the story opens Mel's character Benjamin Martin was hardly a rabid patriot. As a South Carolina legislator Martin joins a small block which opposes independence, warning of the tremendous military power Britain can bring to bear. Martin's frightening prophesy of the war coming home comes true; the Palmetto flag is replaced by the Union Jack when the colonial capitol of South Carolina falls to the British. Even so Benjamin Martin might have been content to have sat out the war on his farms perfecting his woodworking skills until atrocities force Martin who to arms. The struggle devolves into a personal feud with a surly British Colonel Tavington whose nasty deeds would make him an able accomplice of PFC Lynndie England, supposed ringleader of US warders at Abu Grave.
Are the British entitled to cry foul?
The Patriot to some extent tracks the struggle between British Colonel Tarleton and American Francis Marion for control of the Carolinas.
The Patriot's Colonel Tavington is based on the very real life exploits of Colonel Banastre "The Butcher" Tarleton. Dubbed "Bloody Benny" Tarleton's slaughter of surrendering American cavalry at the Waxhaws made him one of the most feared Brish officers.
The historical Banaster Tarleton is a complex character,,, Yet Tarleton the defender of the monarchy was no aristocrat but of the same general merchant class that supported the revolution
Excesses sometimes cow an enemy ; sometimes they encourage resistance,,,
Tarleton certainly scared off many faint of heart, but what remained behind to fight him in the swamps and forests were uniquely determined to fire off a few shots melt away and send The Scarlet Wonder Tarleton charging aimlessly about looking for a vanished enemy already in position for its next ambush
Yet British critics are correct in one sense. The historical "Swamp Fox" Francis Marion who in the William Cullen Bryant poem sent a shiver to the timbers of the British foeman with his very name, discouraged personal feud. There was none of the in-your face repartees. Contact with the British was so distant that Marion's sword rusted into his scabbard.
This core message about the origins of the Republic, however is its historical roots in real-time, real-place communities.
As far as the violence, this was a Revolution chock full of it. The Revolution by no means was a series of parades, speeches and declaration. The Revolution was a violent, divisive event which divided all classes and races.
To Mel's credit, The Patriot makes an interesting point concerning the soldiers of the Revolution. They were good men recruited in church, as well as denizens of the taverns. Some were slaves enlisted by masters. The Revolution divided all classes and races. Some American Blacks fought for the British; some for the Americans. On the American side some were enrolled by their masters or tagged along with them, some were recruited and promised freedom and some were just counted as white.