Can we please be objective?

Rating: Null/10 (30 June 2000)

Someone was saying how offended he was about the allusions made to Braveheart. Had the screenwriters re-written the scene where Mel rides up and down the Rebel lines waving the flag to rally the troops like he did in Braveheart, maybe so many people wouldn't have branded it Braveheart so quickly.
Anyhow, my gripe is with another matter entirely. This film covers a conflict I find the most interesting of all wars. I was really looking forward to a great war film, but it seems a large amount of historical truth was wantonly sacrificed to satisfy the demands of a gripping family drama. This could have been achieved without bastardising the facts of history.
The "hatchet job" someone else mentioned was really done on Banastre Tarleton's reputation (on whom Tavington, the vilifed British cavalry colonel is based), blowing facts completely out of proportion in order to create a genocidal, baby-killer the viewer could hate, to contrast with the straight-laced Patriots.
This happens all too frequently in motion pictures, particularly American ones, but could the same emotional result have been achieved without unfairly vilifying the British. Sure there was a substantial amount of pillaging and massacres of civilians and war prisoners in the war, as there have been in all wars since, but it was done by both sides. Loyalists residing in areas supporting the Rebel or Patriot cause had their houses torched or confiscated and their persons attacked -- that fact of history provided Canada with its first major English-speaking settlers.
I loved the combat scenes in the film, but I can see why a large number of British people, and generally most historical purists have been offended, and why many journalists have given the film less than glowing reviews. As a movie-goer, I've become accustomed to the cliche scenes of Old Glory waving proudly in Hollywood films...It's just a shame the Patriot would have to greatly distort history to achieve such a result, in what would otherwise have been a masterful film.