It's All In How You Look At It

Rating: 2/10 (6 July 2008)

The Patriot is one of those movies that you either love or hate, depending on whether or not you care if it's historically accurate. Being an American-made movie, you have to expect it to be at least a LITTLE bit slanted towards the States, but this one went WAY OVERBOARD!!!!
And just so we're clear, this entire review is my opinion of the story itself, not America's fight in the Revolutionary War. I have nothing against the U.S.A. Only the movie.
One of the worst parts was when Mel Gibson (Benjamin Martin)'s son is shot by a sadistic British Officer who, after shooting the young guy, says "I hope you've learned something about loyalty." (OH PUH-LEASE! Does it get any more disgusting than this? p.s. speaking of loyalty, guess who got tarred and feathered when they refused to take the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America just a few years later? Of course, it didn't mention that in The Patriot. The slaves seemed pretty content too!)
And then there was the part where one of those very people (the Loyalists, or "Tories" as they were called by the Patriots or "Rebels".) was being ordered to burn a church full of people, by the same sadist (Jason Isaacs was actually pretty good in this one! He has a talent for playing the evil dudes). This happened in World War Two.
Another scene showed Benjamin Martin and his young sons attacking a group of 20 or so British soldiers. When one of the men tries to run away, Martin pins him down on the ground and beats him to death. Who's the bloodthirsty one now? (I know that they murdered those men because they were their enemy, but for gosh sakes, at least wait for them to DO something before you ambush and kill them! Those guys were somebody's husband and father too.)
I think most people realize that a lot of the stuff in this movie was for entertainment rather than education. And come to think of it, it IS an action movie, not an historical documentary. But isn't it so much better when you can watch a movie and think 'wow! this actually happened!'?
Anyway, at least it had Heath Ledger!