A kitsch repeat action flick

Rating: Null/10 (11 January 2001)

Just by chance, a CD of John Williams' film music was still playing on my CD player when the DVD entry screen of 'The Patriot' first came onto my video screen and for a moment there, I actually thought that the music I was hearing from 'Saving Private Ryan' was the theme music for 'The Patriot'.

My mistake had merit. Because, sadly, while being an admirer of John Williams, his work on this film seems to have caught the producers' disease of flat commercial repetition.
No doubt someone early in the piece was inspired by the thought that there hasn't been a good War of Independence film for a while and saw a commercial opportunity. And the idea of paralleling the long, difficult and bloody struggle of a father with that of the young American nation was roundly applauded in all the pre-production meetings. But the script is appalling: a little 18th century rhetoric with a lot of midday television kitsch. And the chosen director, Roland Emmerich, has as much emotional finesse and subtlety as the cannonballs hurtling towards camera.
My conclusion is that the producers milked the historical connection for what they could make of it; it barely managed to come second compared to the lavish attention vested on the battle scenes (really the only cinematic reason for seeing the film at all). What triumphed here at the end was not freedom and independence, but another repeat dose of action with digital sound and digital fx. Producers like these should be forced to make films for 10years with budgets of under $100,000 and on a low wage so they can relearn what honest filmmaking is all about.