Herald rating: * * *
Running time: 157 mins
Rental: Today
Review: Ewan McDonald
See the nice American farmer who doesn't really want to fight, he wants a peace treaty with King George. See the evil devil of a British redcoat colonel burn churches, murder children, rape a corpse ... well, what did you
expect when the world's top box-office star reclaimed his American passport and decided to make a movie about his nation's birth? What you get: a bigger, bloodier Braveheart with the same bad guys. Or Lethal Weapon1775.
Yep, this is the one where Mel Gibson shows us his musket butt. Mel stars as Benjamin Martin, a widower with seven children. He fought the French and the Indians and, when his young nation reaches its teens and wants to leave home, would prefer the British and Americans sort out an amicable separation. As the settlers and colonisers scuffle, he treats injured from both sides in his house.
But the aforementioned monster, Colonel William Tavington (Jason Isaacs), shoots one of Martin's sons for the fun of it, burns his house, and arrests his eldest son, Gabriel (Heath Ledger, the 21-year-old Next Mel), and takes him away to be hanged.
Berserk with grief and anger, Martin takes his revenge by hiding in the woods with his remaining sons to ambush Tavington and his soldiers. This gory encounter gives Martin the idea of how he can outwit the British (Mel could have gone back to his old scripts and given him the same idea from his Braveheart days). And when the Americans adopt hit-and-run guerrilla tactics Tavington is told to take what steps are necessary to bring down Martin.
Which means lots of gore in close-up, a passing love-interest so the director can get a female into the picture (Joely Richardson), more cliches than you could throw a schtick at, and a rousing victory for the Home of the Brave.
We've read enough British outrage to know The Patriot has
little or no resemblance to what really happened on either side. Nor did Saving Private Ryan or U-571; like them, this is just a big, fairly dumb action movie with some good performances. Or, as one American writer noted: "As Samuel Johnson might have put it, patriotism is the last refuge of the guy who made Godzilla."
