"Epic" by the books

Rating: 4/10 (10 October 2015)

"The Patriot" is an American movie by German director Roland Emmerich, who is somewhat known for his spectacular Hollywood blockbusters that unfortunately rarely have achieved greatness in terms of storytelling. This film here is no exception. There are several run-times stated here and I watched the version that is the longest, the director's cut that runs for almost 3 hours, very long just like some other Mel Gibson films. Gibson was an Oscar winner at this point already for directing "Braveheart" a couple years earlier. "The Patriot" was also the breakthrough movie for Heath Ledger at the age of 20 and there are more somewhat famous actors in here such as Joely Richardson, Rene Auberjonois, Chris Cooper and Jason Isaacs.
I must say I never had a great interest in the days of the Civil War, so I may be a bit biased here. However, the biggest problem with this movie is probably the lack of emotion. They included plots about dying sons, a dead wife, honor and death in general from start to finish, but I must say, there was not a single situation when this movie really made an emotional impact. I do not think that it was Mel Gibson's fault. I appreciate him as an actor and I do believe he has good range. It's just the usual from Emmerich movies: style over substance. His films tend to get lost in great visuals, costumes, sound work etc., but they rarely succeed to work truly convincingly in terms of the story. This is also shown by the Academy Award nominations this film got including one for the legendary John Williams and also one for eternal losers Kevin O'Connell and Greg P. Russell. I cannot recommend this movie. Technically it may be a high-quality achievement, but story-wise it is not, especially not for a 3-hour movie. Thumbs down.