A movie that tried too hard - even Mel couldn't save it.

Rating: 6/10 (25 July 2000)

If the director could have just picked a theme and stuck with it, this could have been a great movie, but somewhere between the responsible father, invincible soldier, paragon of masculinity, clever frontiersman, and American patriot that Benjamin Martin was supposed to portray this movie lost me. What was he fighting for? What was America fighting for? Are the answers to these two questions the same? If someone had just tried to make that last answer yes, this could have been a great movie...unfortunately, the answer is "maybe" and what we got was a little bit cluttered - a good movie? Maybe.