Woah! Could somebody stop the movie please? I feel sick!

Rating: Null/10 (4 October 2001)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** Mel Gibson, or The Eternal Champion, as he likes to be called, is beginning a habit of saving the principles of freedom during his wacky adventures through time. I think The Patriot was relying on the hitherto infallible formula that overlong war dramas are always well-liked successes. Come on guy, need I remind you of the Postman?! Unfortunately, the respective Director/Producer team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin brought The Patriot to us. These two goat-legged demonspawn were also responsible for the deplorably mind-numbing tripe that was Independence Day and the god-awful, Japan-free version of Godzilla. I did, however, enjoy the ace camerawork of cinematographer Caleb Deschanel. There were plenty, but not too many, beautiful shots of the countryside. The battle scenes look excellent. Despite its shortcomings, The Patriot was definitely a picturesque film. The plot, on the other hand.
Mel Gibson plays a cop on the ragged edge, wait, I mean an ex-soldier on the ragged edge, whose name was Benjamin Martin. Don't let the malignancy of the movie fool you, Gibson is a phenomenal actor, and he shines through despite the movie in general. After dismembering a large troop of French soldiers, he returned home to pray for forgiveness. Martin's wife is dead, and he raised seven children alone. When his oldest son, Gabriel, portrayed by fellow Aussie Heath Ledger, joins the revolt against King George's tyranny, Martin forbids him to leave, which makes no difference to the headstrong, idealistic Gabriel. Gabriel returns `two years' later, (though there was little to no recognition of the passage of time) with a large bayonet incision on his midsection. However, despite his adversity in nearly having his organs spilling out of his skin, the next day, he wakes up in his house with a bandage on that allows him to walk with no pain whatsoever. The war is taken directly to Martin's front door, where he is caring for wounded, both American and British. Enter the heartless bad-guy, Colonel Tavington, portrayed with startling evilness by Jason Isaacs. Basically, Tavington is the kind of character that would shoot a twelve-year old in the back and then chuckle about it. Coincidentally, this is just one of the many horrors perpetrated by the chilling Colonel. He orders the wounded Americans shot, and arrests Gabriel as a spy, planning to hang him. As Martin points out, these are direct infractions of the rules of war. Bah, the evil officer cares not for rules; he kills without compassion or compunction. That's what makes him evil.
This leads to a powerful scene in which Martin and his two young sons ambush a troop of twenty redcoats who are holding Gabriel. The sons fire round after round into the British ranks. Every shot is a kill, and they are crying the entire time. Martin, after firing all his guns, runs into the fray with his hatchet and dagger, personally gutting the majority of the woefully incompetent British soldiers. This scene was very powerful, so I won't disclose the entire happenings, but it was tremendously exciting.

Later in the movie, we meet a character for the second time. This is a character that I really didn't even care to meet the first time to be frank. I had truly hoped they forgot about her. She was one of Gabriel's acquaintances from his younger years, all grown up and obvious fertile ground for an annoyingly childish love interest. Well, they don't disappoint us on this ground, or, more accurately, they do. Ann, portrayed with true-to-life irritation, has far too many scenes in which she and Gabriel trade a prank back and forth. No, it's not the old rubber vomit in the luggage trick; they take unrelenting joy in giving each other tea mixed with a dash of ink. Unfortunately, this "imaginative" prank leads to countless shots of toothy, ear-to-ear grins full of black teeth. To his day, I'm not sure if the intent here was for humor, or to make us sad. After Martin and Son join forces, Gabriel walks into the church in Ann's town. He tries to enlist the men of the town, but to no avail, they cower in fear at his bellicose ways, too afraid to fight the British. A glimmer of hope appears as Ann, in a rousing speech, browbeats the callow men into joining the guerrillas. This rousing speech was set to a rousing John Williams score, it would have been quite rousing if it weren't for the fact that it was stereotypical, poorly delivered, and set to a rousing John Williams tune. Several of the people in the theatre, myself included, actually started laughing during this scene. If there's one thing that knocks a movie down a few notches, it's uncontrollable laughter during a scene that is supposed to be serious.
While on the subject of female love interests that are trite, annoying, and unable to act, we have Martin's sister-in-law, Cleavage. Uh, I mean Clara. She was portrayed with a number of low-cut dresses by Joely Richardson. I can recall, early in the movie, thinking, `Oh, please don't let her be a love interest. Please, movie, I'll do anything!' I've seen enough movies by now to know that pleading with a movie is a very bad sign. About two hours later, the movie kicks me in the teeth by showing a `romantic' scene between the Martin and his sister-in-law. Overall, this is one movie that you should definitely see if you like having your brain cut open and sliced into tiny bits, or if you decide beforehand, that you just want to see people getting cut open by bayonets.