According to this banal collection of movie standards, it was Mel Gibson, not George Washington.

Rating: Null/10 (19 February 2001)

The Patriot is well filmed, but in the end it's just a "politically corrected" amalgamation of well-worn and painfully predictable Hollywood stereotypes and storylines, with scenes and plot "twists" lifted directly out of movies we have all seen a thousand times. (There is a certain verisimilitude, though, imparted to the 18th Century battles scenes reminicent of the same type of "reality" that was brought to the D-Day landing segment of "Saving Private Ryan", and for this one can really gain some appreciation for what American soldiers went through during the Revolutionary War; I suspect, however, that the true reason for this was the film makers' desire to show people's limbs being separated from their bodies by 12 pound cannonballs).
So here we have Mel Gibson as a South Carolina plantation owner, widower, and loving father to seven children: a well know "bad-ass" from his exploits during the French and Indian War (1754-63), Southern aristocrat Gibson now does not believe in violence, and wishes only to farm in peace. (This brings to mind the Clint Eastwood character in "The Outlaw Josey Wales", who joins with the rebels only after his family is murdered and his farmstead burned by marauding Union troops). Gibson's politically correct plantation has no slaves, remarkably enough, but families of African-Americans happily working there of their own volition, as we are duly informed; the African-American woman who is the housekeeper and cook speaks perfect 20th Century English, and apparently can read too, since she casually examines the mail dropped off by a rider in the opening scene. Actually, Gibson himself has no Southern accent, though some of his neighbors do.
At this point the evil English officer is introduced to the movie, who promptly and cooly shoots Mel's 15 year old son to set the plot into motion. His character is identical to the English villain in "Rob Roy", or the Sheriff of Nottingham from Robin Hood, for that matter: the upper class accented heartless butcher, seeking to compensate for his own wretchedness and unhappiness. Forced into action, and to return to violence, Gibson's character confesses to the atrocities he and his collegues visited upon the French during the previous war. In previous generations a military hero would have been shown in a psoitive light; for PC Hollywood today, however, the hero's exploits are now to be reviled as sadistic and murderous: his victory is not one of courage and tactics, but of torturing captured French soldiers (who had themselves committed heinois acts).
So the movie lurches on from battle to battle in predictable sequence. Some of these scenes, and indeed the climactic battle scene, seem to be directed lifted from "Braveheart", although with weapony slightly more advanced: hordes of men yelling and charging on broad fields with Mel in the thick of it. Along the way the British are turned into SS troopers, more happy African-Americans are found living in African harmony somewhere near the coast (presumably of South Carolina) but speaking without the slightest trace of Southern, or African-American dialects or accents. (A boorish white soldier in Gibson's command who scorned the black slave enlisted by his owner in Gibson's militia of course is later saved by him, and solemnly proclaims that he is "honored" to serve with him, lest any in the audience have missed this message).
George Washington and the Continental Army get pretty short shrift in Gibson's war, but in the pivotal battle, conveniently just before Yorktown (where the British surrendered) Gibson rallies the troops 'round the flag when the lines are faltering (just before finding and facing his nemisis among the 30,000 or so present on the battlefield)and siezes victory from the jaws of defeat- the Revolution is saved, and America is born! (Not before the "we've-seen-this-at-least-a-thousand-times-before" fight to the finish between Gibson and the evil British officer who murdered his son(s).This scene comes directly from "Rob Roy" in its choreography).
This movie unnecessarily demonizes the English, plays havoc with history to effect its Hollywood PC messages, disparages the accomplishments of American revolutionary soldiers and layers on tired diagloge, plot devices and sermonizing for any who have missed their ham-handed point of view. As history it's a joke. As a "patriotic" American film, it's disingenuous. As entertainment, it's only passable (barely). It is not absolutely horrible, but that's really the best thing I can say about it, and that's rather sad.