Innovative in it's way of telling a 225 year old story using modern movie-making style and techniques.

Rating: 10/10 (25 August 2000)

Warning! A few spoilers!...Roland Emmerich directed this film, which is the reason I was skeptical as I walked into the theater. Then as the ending credits rolled I realized that I had wrongly underestimated Emmerich. His films have had very good direction, just lackluster screenplays and careless editing (Independence Day was written in less than a week by Emmerich and Dean Devlin while the two were vacationing in Mexico, and a good portion of Stargate was removed which resulted in Act III lasting only 10-12 minutes). Now, working from a screenplay from Saving Private Ryan pen man Robert Rodat, The Patriot works well with Emmerich at the helm. Most compare it to Mel Gibson's Braveheart. Why support a film that glorifies another country's independence more than a film that glorifies our own? British actor Jason Isaacs finally gets to show off his fine acting skills in a good film, and I thought he was wonderful as the evil Redcoat Colonel (Many British were offended by this character, but he was based on a real officer under Cornwallis's command). He played an evil man almost as effectively as Ralph Fiennes did in Schindler's List. Isaacs would be the perfect bad guy in a Bond film. I loved the vicious "cannonball to the face" shot, and the slo-mo attack on the Redcoats led by Martin's eldest son. And I heard more sniffles when Martin's youngest daughter begged for her father to stay than I did when Leo sunk to the ocean floor at the end of Titanic. The only thing I didn't like about this film was John William's score. It was cheesy and gave some of the "serious" battle scenes an almost cartoon feel. I wish David Arnold, who usually scores Emmerich's films and the new James Bond flicks, had done this one. Arnold is an overlooked talent and is (in my opinion) the best composer in the business today. And although it effectively and brutally showed us how young children saw the carnage of this war up close, I seriously doubt that Martin and two young sons could have killed that many British soldiers. We also never find out what happened to the loyalist who, like a coward, succumbed to carrying out Tavington's order to burn the church. Overall, it's a film worth seeing, and it shows us what those flute and drum-fanfared History Channel specials couldn't quite get across about the Revolutionary War, even though the film uses the war as a backdrop to the main story.