Technically-impressive war film, but it's all been seen before.

Rating: Null/10 (14 July 2000)

The Patriot is a Revolutionary War action film from the team of director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin, known for lame sci-fi schlock like Godzilla and Independence Day. With Patriot, this pair has once again fallen short of their aspirations. Although it has substantial technical quality, this cannot mask that that movie is a stale rehash of scenes and ideas we have seen too many times.
Mel Gibson stars as Benjamin Martin, a Colonial farmer with a dark past he earned for his actions during the French and Indian War. He also has over a half dozen children, and because of this, when the battle for independence between the American Colonies and the British Empire spills into his backyard, he chooses not to fight. However, his oldest son Gabriel, played by relative newcomer Heath Ledger, is eager to join the rebel army, and thus drags his father into the conflict.
Gibson and Ledger are both good in their headlining roles, and bring much-needed credibility to the cast. The other stand-out here is as Martin's second oldest son, proof that good child actors do, in fact, still exist. But the rest of the actors can not stand up to both the intimidating presence of Gibson, nor the limpness of the unoriginal and overlong script. Chris Cooper looks simply bored as a Colonel and old friend of Martin's, and Tom Wilkinson plays General Cornwallis as a prissy fop. That's pretty much how all the English in Patriot are depicted: as either simpering fools like Cornwallis or his Lieutenants, or blood-thirsty savages like the head villain, the devilish and psychotic Colonel Tavington.
Tavington enters the picture in the first half-hour, committing an act that thrusts Ben Martin into the struggle between America and England. Up until this point, The Patriot has been fairly subtle and ponderous, but all the while exciting. When Tavington arrives on the scene, the film deteriorates into a cheap and lazy action movie with all the predictable turns, albeit some great cinematography.
That great cinematography, along with the performances of Gibson and Ledger, are all that help the movie hover above its boring, pedestrian script. We've seen these scenes time and time again, and they seem to get worse every time. Gibson recruits a team of rag-tag guerrilla soldiers to help him in his fight. There's a Frenchman played by Tchéky Karyo, and that description is the soul and essence of the character. He's French. He has funny French clothes, and a funny French accent. There's also a preacher who shocks his town in a supposedly comedic scene by taking up arms with his fellow Americans. Along with these two is an assortment of two-fisted scoundrels and pirates. They're each given a couple of clunky one-liners to help solidify them in our minds before they're killed by the evil British. It doesn't work.
The worst of these characters is a slave who fights with the Colonials in order to win his freedom, following a new statement decreed by General Washington. The other soldiers despise him, but once he saves their lives, they become honored to have him on their side. This is just one example of the fake, mock sentimentality pressed onto the audience throughout the movie. On the subject of slavery and these politically correct emotions, the Africans we see working in the fields of Martin's home are discovered to not be slaves at all, but are instead free black men who work the land for Gibson, and are paid. How Emmerich or screenwriter Robert Rodat did not recognize the stupidity of making such statements about their character, in the time period of the film, is incredible.
The rest of the cast fares even worse. Jason Isaacs gives an admirable attempt as the wicked Tavington, but like almost everyone else in Patriot, he cannot rise above the cartoonish nature of his character. He kills children. He says evil, despicable things. He burns an entire quaint little town to ashes by locking them inside their church and having his men set the structure ablaze. Maybe all this would have some weight if the viewer didn't realize from the first minute the two laid eyes on each other that The Patriot would conclude with the trusty fist fight between the heroic Gibson and the serpentine Isaacs, complete with slow-motion dramatics and characters who choose to give speeches while they have more than enough time to dispatch their foe.
Also weak is Joely Richardson as Charlotte, the sister of Gibson's deceased wife. It's not really her fault; her role as Martin's love interest is shallow and strangely cryptic, considering the character she's playing. An even worse female role is Anne Howard, played by Lisa Brenner, the requisite cute love interest for Ledger. She's annoying and grating, and although her ultimate fate of pitiful, its hard to imagine how the movie would have been bearable if she had a larger role.
The battle scenes are nice, but after the first time we see one, nothing changes. We are then treated to the same-styled carnage several times, and each one gets even more haphazard and unexciting. The final conflict of the film makes an attempt at a Braveheart-like spectacle, but cannot rouse much substance to go along with its epic camera sweeps. To its credit, the rest of the movie makes no effort to even try and rip-off much of anything from the similarly-themed Gibson classic.
In the end, The Patriot is a well-made film, but we've seen everything it has to offer numerous times, and many of those experiences have been far superior.
Patriot receives a 7 out of 10.