Pretty bad

Rating: 1/10 (8 October 2006)

To be fair some of the action/battle sequences are good, but my God it's nauseating at times. Mel Gibson uses the American flag to dismount the main villain from his horse, he waves it about in slow motion to bad music to 'inspire' to rebels to keep on fighting in the climatic battle, and he has black people working on his farm in South Carolina but they're not slaves of course they're more like modern-day employees who actually want to work there(!). The white rebel racist ends up as the best friend of a freed slave (who himself has suddenly fallen in love with the rebels who kept him as a slave in the first place), when 'Mel'asks Jodie Foster if he can sit down next to her she replies 'It's a free country... or at least it will be' (talk about vomit inducing), and this whole thing about Mel Gibson being a patriot is nonsense - he joined the revolutionary cause to get revenge for his son, not out of feelings of patriotism. And I never understood why rebels were called patriots anyway, surely the Loyalists were the patriots. Finally there's the thing about the British soldiers being portrayed carrying out acts of genocide which the Nazi's would've been proud of. This is so offensive words can hardly describe. Oh... and hardly any of the actors are that good (ironically the two which most stand out are British - Jason Isaacs and Tom Wilkinson). This film has a (very) small number of positive attributes, but overall it's stomach-churning drivel which, unfortunately, some people WILL take to be historically accurate.