maybe worse than "the patriot"

Rating: Null/10 (10 July 2002)

Well I never liked Braveheart much, and very much disliked The Patriot. This film was sort of the next in the series I guess. Credit to the special effects- fairly realistic I would imagine. The story was true, I guess, so can't be criticised. But the film was difficult to watch, it view of the war was very much skewed- no disrespect to the American casualties -but a lot of Vietnamese died as well, the film only half made an effort to show this. I felt that dealing with religion in the film was out of place -and badly done. Also, dealing with racism was done rather too obviously, with an apparently spontaneous speech from one of the wives. All in all, too many speeches -every time a soldier spoke, it was a profound statement -and the american flag perhaps featured too much for the international audience. Considering the main character was also the books author, I was a bit doubtful about the films accuracy because he (Mel Gibson) was some sort of superhero in the film. It would have been better if someone else told the story. Not a classic by any means.