The Patrionator

Rating: Null/10 (24 April 2004)

Quick Name one reason why TV is cool. Ok How about this? It lets you see movies like The Patriot without having to buy a ticket. Sure, you'll miss a bit of the R-rated carnage, but hey, that's why we have imagination. It's why Quentin Tarantino released the pull-way version of the ear-ectomy in Reservoir Dogs instead of the alternate version that actually showed Michael Madsen's razor work. The mind is the real stage, the real screen.
The Revolutionary War will probably never work well on the Hollywood screen. There are several reasons for this, all of which would require more space to properly examine than is available here. Suffice it to say that, despite its crucial role in the history of America, the Revolutionary War is simply too quaint to sell major tickets; best to leave it to PBS, maybe. Pigtailed men running around in knee breeches, marching in rigorous order and firing flintlock rifles that require minutes to load between shots doesn't exactly put us on the edge of our seats. But neither does the scowling, bellowing Mel Gibson, even as he hacks his way through a platoon of Redcoats like Toshiro Mifune with a tomahawk, avenging the rather brutal and unnecessary death (in terms of the story) of his youngest son at the hands of the British. The Patriot will, and probably should, irritate anyone with a reasonable knowledge of history, the references to which, in this film, skip off reality like a flat stone across water. The War of Independence really does deserve better. It was far, far more interesting than its pro-forma representation here.
So, is there nothing good to say? Well, damn near. However, The Patriot did render a superb villain in Jason Isaacs' Colonel William Tavington and it is around this somewhat trumped up spirit of darkness that the film really orbits. The Tavington character radiates the same cold light that emanated from what is possibly one of the very greatest portraits of nastiness ever brought to the screen: Jack Palance's gunfighter Jack Wilson in Shane. The fact that Tavington was forced by the powers to act more like an equestrian Reinhard Heydrich than an English gentleman of the era betrays the film's lack of confidence in its own historical foundation. The Brits pulled some funky stuff during the Revolution. Armed conflict tends to bring such things out in us. But atrocities as heinous as were ascribed to the British in The Patriot never occurred. Director Roland Emmerich is German. Perhaps he has residual issues over the outcome of World War Two. The historical person on which the Tavington character was obviously based, Colonel Banastre Tarleton, actually did command British forces in the Carolinas during the War of Independence, and was certainly interesting enough to warrant a film of his own. Tarleton was not the near-satanic presence that Tavington embodies, in fact quite the opposite. It's safe to say that if the boyish Tarleton, and not Jeb Stuart, had been commanding Lee's cavalry at Gettysburg, he would not have been dashing about stealing wagons instead of shadowing the Union army. The outcome of the battle, not to mention history, might well have been different. Still, the Tavington character is the one element in the film that really resonates. Maybe The Patriot should be re-released under the title, Bad Dragoon.
Rene Auberjonois, whose alienated, unflinching Constable Odo was probably the best thing about the otherwise moribund Babylon Five rip, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and who played the courageous reverend in The Patriot, also played the young George Washington in a 1974 episode of PBS' N.E.T. Playhouse, "Portrait of the Hero as a Young Man" depicting Washington's participation in the opening actions of the French and Indian War, when he commanded colonial militia under the British. For those wondering why Mel Gibson's Benjamin Martin refused to answer his son's (Heath Ledger) repeated question: `What happened at Fort Wilderness?', I may have an answer. There was, of course, no such historical place. If the definitive authority on such matters, the eminent 19th century historian Francis Parkman fails to reference it, then, it was never there. However, there is a Disney resort of that name in Orlando. Mel was probably embarrassed to admit that he overpaid for his cabin.