a movie, certainly nothing less

Rating: 5/10 (20 December 2000)

this was a Hollywood movie about the revolutionary war, made quite possibly only because there hasn't been one made that's on the tip of anyone's tongue. I watched it. it lasted about 3 hours or something and those hours didn't drudge on or anything. i was entertained by the slightly gratuitous violence and definitely entertained by the tactically retarded "ye olde" battle style, but there was an element of creativity lacking that lagged this movie. It was the archetypical hero versus villian story with all the class structures in their typical respective places; the good johnny rebel american peasants versus the insanely evil upper-class British b*****ds (and of course one really really really mean Brit in particular.) It just seemed very tired and failed to really make an impression on me. If i were asked to recall a scene from 'The Patriot,' which i saw maybe 2 weeks ago- i could explicitly visualise heads getting blown off and legs cannonballed away, but there was really very little in the plotline that caught me off guard enough to fully focus my attention span.
the patriot is not a bad movie, but given the choice between watching this movie and 'that other mel gibson' epic war rebellion tale for the 15th time, old Bill Wallace won't let you down.