Slanted, jingoistic, and just plain bad

Rating: 1/10 (22 January 2008)

Top ten reasons this movie offends me 1. Historically inaccurate historical films are to be expected, but if I'm going to be so badly misled about how my country began, I don't want an Aussie doing it to me. 2. Sensationalized villains are to be expected in all shoot-em-up movies (and that's all this movie is, at best) but a war movie in which every single redcoat is willing to burn down churches filled with women and children is a joke. 3. Beatified heroes are to be expected in all braindead action movies (don't call it a historical epic- the term implies at least a single scrap of fidelity to the truth, which this movie eschews), but one in which all Americans are lay-down-your-life for the next guy heroes is a joke. 4. Suspension of disbelief is expected in all works of fiction, but even a moron could not suspend enough disbelief to choke down this hogwash. 5. Mel Gibson is the director, and plays the starring role as a South Carolina Plantation owner that does not own slaves. What a joke. 6. The blacks who work on Gibson's plantation love their jobs, and are willing to fight for the America that will hold their brethren in slavery in all the plantations next door to them. I find this deeply offensive. 7. What a wasted opportunity for real moral thought in a historical movie. Our revolution raises real issues about freedom and slavery, loyalty and independence. Someone who actually cared about the truth, and about moral quandaries, could have made a really good movie here- the movie I was hoping to see when I went into the theater that day. Instead I got Mel Gibson reducing our great history into a piece of propaganda (and dumb propaganda at that). It's like using a roller to put a new paint job on a classic rolls royce. 8. Little-known fact: every single historian who served as a consultant in this movie demanded to have their name removed from the credits after seeing the final print, in order to not ruin their academic reputation. 9. Gibson went on to make another movie about another important moment in history you may have heard of. I have not seen that movie. I was told it was good. It might indeed have been a good movie. But how can you believe it? This movie showed such flagrant disregard for objective truth that it undermines his credibility in everything else he makes of similar genre. How could I possibly believe that Mr. Gibson would make a true movie about Jesus if he did this to the history of my country? As R.W. Emerson said, "who you are shouts in my ears so loudly that I cannot hear what you say". This movie shouts that Gibson is a liar. 10. Gibson had already made a historical movie before this one. It was called "Braveheart". I really liked it. I even became curious about William Wallace, the hero depicted, about whom I knew nothing (like all Americans, really- for us, Wallace was not really a significant historical figure). But looking back at that movie, it's now clear to me that it followed the exact same formula- all Scotsmen are good, all Englishmen are bad, Gibson is a superstud, the bad guys lack a single shred of goodness-- your basic simplistic action movie that takes the easy way out every time the thinking and moral reasoning gets tough. Just like "The Patriot". So basically, "The Patriot" is a movie that is so bad that it can ruin other movies- it ruined "Braveheart" by showing an easily fooled moviegoer that a movie he thought was good actually wasn't, and it ruined "Passion" without my ever having seen it, because, after seeing this, I cannot trust Gibson to tell the truth about anything that matters. And the life of Jesus matters. So I will learn about it from someone I know will tell the truth.