People often speak in speeches rather than in conversation. Good guys die in slo-mo, every agonized line on a face sculpted with a nobility suitable for Mount Rushmore. Then switch on the emotional cues from John Williams' score, soaring like an eagle borne on gusts of hot air. At times, Patriot is the ultimate men's movement movie. It seems to say that it's OK to hack and chop your enemy to death with your bare hands, until your face is painted as red as the god of war.
Adrenaline is a hard thing to stop.
It used to be that Revolutionary War movies turned up at times of national decision, reflecting upon our nation's past in order to help us steer the course to the future. The film's most likable facet is Gibson. Haunted by memories of grisly doings during an earlier frontier war against the French and their Native American allies, when he became a hero for committing the kind of atrocities UN tribunals investigate nowadays, he hopes to sit out the Revolutionary War. But when the cruel British cavalry colonel comes and tries to hang his oldest son for fighting with the Continental Army, murders another son who tries to stop him, burns down the plantation and in general behaves like Slobodan Milosovic with a burr under his saddle, mild-mannered Gibson is transformed suddenly into Patriot Man, who can fell 10 Brits with one glancing blow. A lesser actor would play the character as Rambo with a three-cornered hat and a musket.