A missed opportunity.

Rating: 5/10 (29 January 2001)

First things first: The Patriot is by no means terrible, but it could have been so great.
Instead of a powerful historical epic which, given its premise, should have been as gut-wrenchingly emotional as Braveheart or as visceral as Gladiator, we have a big budget movie which leaves the viewer surprisingly cold.
Mel Gibson is pretty good to start with but then resorts to the old tried and tested formula of self-deprecating action hero a la Lethal Weapon. Heath Ledger makes a pretty strong impression, but like Joely Richardson in a thankless mannequin-type role, is given precious little to do. And as for Jason Isaacs: he has provided us with one of the worst cinematic villains in an age, all flaring nostrils and evil glances. This is a truly awful performance from a normally reliable actor. Only Tom Wilkinson rises above it all in another award-calibre performance.
Historical accuracy and dramatic liberties aside, I can only say that this movie fails because of its director. God only knows what talented screenwriter Robert Rodat's script was like before Roland Emmerich got hold of it, but it's safe to say that Roland is not exactly the right choice to combine human drama and epic sweep into one satisfying whole. He stages the set pieces predictably and with little visual imagination, and he seems more interested in his special effects than in the plight of his characters. Any memorable pictorial flourish is there because of the talented cinematographer, Caleb Deschanel, and not, I believe, because of any directorial insight from this Independence Day and Godzilla hack.
All in all, it's a shame. The Patriot should have been joining the ranks of classic American historical dramas such as Glory and Dances With Wolves. Instead, it just sits there, inert, uninteresting, occasionally striking, but mostly just average.
5/5