Oh where would we be without Gibson potraying us as Nazi's.

Rating: 1/10 (13 March 2002)

Yes I'm English. I'm also a student of History. Which means I feel that I have a right to call this the biggest pile of tosh that I have seen. I should have expected the English soldiers not to be potrayed in a nice light, as it is directed by Mel Gibson, and will include his dislike/hatred of the English (Braveheart was similarly biased, though not too badly, though Gallipoli was just an insult to English soldiers), but I wasn't expecting the average redcoated soldier who was simply doing his job, to be shown as a mass murdering fiend who went around setting fire to churches with people inside. that particular event happened, though it was done by a group of American militia, who locked and set fire to a church with Virginian loyalist families inside. none of the atrocities dedicated to the British soldiers EVER happened. The War just wasn't like that. Personally, I think America was in the Right in trying to gain its Independence, but it was over the ridiculously high taxes imposed on the citizenry to fund an American continent army to fight the French in Canada, and not over "Freedom" which they alreay had to a large extent, and DEFINATELY not over slavery, for which most, including the main character Benjamin Martin (In real life he was Daniel Morgan), did not care about. He actually owned a number of slaves, bet you didn't know that. I think its insulting to the black population of America, because the result of the war was that slavery was still in practice long after it was banned in the British Empire. bet you didn't know that either. Bet you didn't know that the English baddie who murdered all those surrendering troops, in actual fact never murdered POW's in real life.
So Kudos to Mel Gibson for altering history to make himself look like the man who won the War of Independence, and to making the British soldiers (and there were Scottish, Welsh and Irish soldiers fighting there as well, which the director of Braveheart forgot to include in this film).
And before any of you out there say something like "Well, we still won limey" just remember that I think America was in the right in the whole war. I just don't like bald faced lies.