Old fashioned to the max

Rating: Null/10 (28 July 2000)

Mel is Errol Flynn or Stewart Granger. The son is Brandon de Wilde or Dean Stockwell. The Englisch bastard is Claude Rains or Basil Rathbone. His wife's sister is Olivia De Haviland or Joan Fontaine. And of course: director Emmerich is John Ford or Michael Curtiz...
I enjoyed this movie, well made but utterly conventional and old fashioned. Mel is great. Without him this must have been a real painfully longwinded experience. The fightscenes are excellent. The acting adequate. The music by Williams awful. The sentiment too easy.
I went to the premiere here in Holland and it was sold out. Many of the people in the cinema were teens or early twenties. The ones that hate to see films dated more then five years and who do not watch b&w movies because they "suck". They cheered and clapped. But do they know just how much the Patriot is like those b&w pictures from the thirties and forties? Guess not....