Of course all the women are spunky and independent, and all the blacks are noble and loyal. Particularly juvenile are the film’s attempts to address race and gender. Some of the lessons, though, fall kind of flat. Family, of course, is important, and, indeed, God bless America (and all our world). War certainly is terrible, but also sometimes justified. Guerrilla warfare really is superior to old-fashioned field warfare, and ragtag militias really did hold their own against superior British forces until French reinforcements arrived. When you get right down to it, even the effete powdered aristocrats are really brutal and lawless.ĭespite the tongue-in-cheek tone of the above list, it will be seen at once that there really is something to some of these ideas.Unless they are effete powdered aristocrats.If the farmers are important characters, they will not be grungy or snaggle-toothed.Therefore, a ragtag militia of grungy, snaggle-toothed farmers will be able to hold their own against much larger numbers of polished, trained British regulars.Old-fashioned field warfare is foolish and vastly inferior to guerrilla hide-and-seek hit-and-run tactics.Then you can go and do the terrible things.War is so terrible, and makes men do such terrible things, that even if you have a legitimate grievance it is better to avoid war and to pursue instead other avenues of recourse especially if you have young sons and daughters to protect.Here are some of the things The Patriot believes, expressed in propositional form:
It opens on a rather thoughtful note and proceeds to sound a number of other notes as well, some thoughtful, some sentimental, some simplistic, some silly. I said above that The Patriot has the courage of its convictions. Perhaps the film doesn’t quite fall between two stools, but it certainly vacillates uncomfortably between them: Too grim and violent to bill itself as an earlier Independence Day, but too light-weight, cliché-ridden, and caricatured to be taken seriously as a realistic war film, The Patriot never quite manages to justify itself in either capacity, though it still manages to work often enough as one or the other. Heads and limbs are blown off by cannonballs, bodies are skewered by bayonets and swords, and Gibson does terrible things with a hatchet. On the other hand, in its bloodiness and gore (not to mention its length) it recalls such momentous films as Saving Private Ryan (which was also written by Patriot scribe Robert Rodat) and Braveheart (which of course also starred Gibson). And, indeed, like previous efforts from director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin (the schlockmeisters who brought us Stargate, Independence Day, and Godzilla), The Patriot abounds with action-movie clichés, including the murder of the hero’s loved ones, the villain who won’t die, and of course (I trust this will not be perceived as spoiling anything) the climactic showdown between hero and villain.
It’s easy to dismiss the caricaturing of the British on the grounds that The Patriot isn’t a serious historical drama anyway, but a popcorn action movie of the sort that always features black-hearted moustache-twirling villains. But what about a film that goes to great lengths to provoke a man simply in order to get to the brutality? And what about the ridiculously monstrous caricatures on the other side who are necessary to bring about the needed provocations (and then of course to suffer the desired brutality)? All right, it’s all very well for a film to point out that men sometimes resort to brutality when sorely provoked. The protagonist of The Patriot, American militia leader Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson in his strongest performance since Braveheart) is not a perfect man and it’s the film’s credit that it doesn’t pretend he is. When the film ended, though, my passions cooled while my misgivings remained. ("It’s a father thing," I told my companion, a single guy who remained dry-eyed.) And when the protagonist ran into the thick of battle through faltering fellow soldiers, rallying them with tattered Old Glory held high, I felt a swelling of patriotic pride. When a young child burst into tears and begged her father not to go away, my eyes welled up right on schedule. With every war crime the villain committed, I wanted to see him brought to justice.
Unlike Gladiator, a more sophisticated but less involving film, The Patriot drew me in.
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