Deep thoughts amidst the cartoony glory

Rating: 7/10 (5 July 2000)

Three things stand out about The Patriot.
First, the production is gorgeous. Both the beauty and the bloodiness of 18th Century life is captured with loving detail.
Second, the production (effectively) uses every cliche and hoary stereotype they can to play up the melodrama. Good guys are brave and noble, occasionally rash when driven to extremes, but of good heart and true. Bad guys are egomaniacal brutes, doing everything but twirling their moustachios.
Third, countering the above, Gibson's character does a fine job of at least exploring the very real, very troubling questions of duty and violence. To whom does one have a duty -- self, family, neighbors, country, God? How far does one go in pursuing that duty, to what depths of violence does one sink? What is just, what is honorable, what is socially acceptable, and what is moral? How do you live with yourself after making such decisions, and seeing the cost they bring both to yourself and to others, either through your actions or your inaction?
Though ultimately it all dissolves into a bright-hued melange of patriotic fervor and Happy Endings, at least these questions are touched on and mentioned before being discarded. The lessons of the film touch directly on our lives and on world events -- one gains a new understanding of recent violence and warfare in the Balkans, for example, after watching The Patriot.