Awful

Rating: 5/10 (27 January 2017)

The Patriot (2000)
Plot In A Paragraph: Peaceful farmer Benjamin Martin (Gibson) is driven to lead the Colonial Militia during the American Revolution against a sadistic British officer (Jason Isaacs).
Back when this was released I liked a few Roland Emmerich movies (by that, I mean Universal Soldier, Stargate and Independence Day) so I was willing to give this one a chance, and would probably go to the cinema to see it!! However the trailers left me feeling a bit flat, and I skipped it in cinema's.. my brother rented it on video and I caught a few scenes as he watched it, as I was in and out of the room. What I seen was laughably bad. Almost as if it was a spoof movie!! My impression of it was so poor, I've never sat down and watched it until now.
Well.... nothing I have seen here gave me the impression I was wrong!! The Patriot is boring, pretincious, ridiculously cliché and is just bad movie in general. Also the title makes no sense either. As Gibson's character was not a Patriot at all. He couldn't care less about the war, and had no desire to get involved at all, until a character dies, which spurns Mel's desire for revenge. Revenge not his patriotic duty.
Gibson goes through the motions, Heath Ledger gives the impression he is reading his lines from a none to helpful actors prompt book.. and Jason Isaacs is awful in full pantomime villain mode.
It seems like Emmerich tried to cram as many clichés in as possible, as if he was winking at the audience. But no. Sadly, it's serious. A peaceful man refuses to fight until a personal tragedy forces him into action, Children, who can not only outsmart red coats, they have a much better shooting accuracy than trained red coats too!! (As the bad guys all have terrible aim, so not too many heroes die) the token black guy and the lone racist (only one racist guy in 1776 South Carolina?? PLEASE) who learns the error of his ways fighting side by side with him and the final battle (which America is never in any danger of losing) in which the hero singlehandedly kills the villain of the piece and wins an important battle in the war!! Pathetic
To put it bluntly, I'd rather go see a firework display during a thunderstorm than rewatch The Patriot.
However my thoughts were not echoed by many, as The Patriot was another $100 million grosser for Gibson, as it ended the year with $113 million at the domestic box office to finish the year as the 19th highest grossing movie of 2000.