Mel Gibson, Dean Devlin, and Robert Rodat are trying to change all that and they may be succeeding. Allthough I am sure "Perfect Storm" will do better overall business than "The Patriot", This film is WAY BETTER in depth and scope. Gibson's character, Benjamin Martin is magnificent. A soldier in the French and Indian War (a colonial conflict for possession of Eastern North America between the British and the French during the 1750's), Martin embodies American idividualism. A gentleman farmer who only sholders his musket and tomahawk after his land becomes a battlefield in a new war and his children witnesses to that war. Gibson brings his usual flair for acting to this role and in some of his manorisms and actions there is even a tinge of character Martin Riggs from "Lethal Weapon". That was very appealing! Robert Rodat wrote this script with Gibson in mind for the title role from the start, and it is good that he did. I don't think this movie could be as entertaining as it was without Mel's one-liners and commanding screen presence.

This leads us to the plot. Without giving too much away, I felt this film was quit historically acurate. Martin's descriptions to Heath Ledger's character Gabriel, of the atrocities he committed at Fort Wilderness, were a very real aspect of colonial fighting in North America. The actions of Martin's militia group poping out of the forests, swamps, and cotton fields to fight, then simply disappear was very representitive of the War in the southern states after 1779. The free slave communities along the Atlantic beaches were also common and exhisted much as was shown in the film. The climax of the film shows the Battle of Cowpens as it actually happened, albeit Gibson's character leading a particular charge that really never occurred. The only aspect of this film that DID bother me was the accuracy of the weapons. There is no possible way a 50 caliber bullet shot from a British Officer's pistol packing 20 grain of blackpowder would kill a man off his horse 100 yards away. The Smithsonian historical consultants should have caught that right away!!!!! (If you haven't guessed I moon light as a history teacher - just don't tell anyone!)

Allthough this is not the best movie I ever saw, it does have a quality to it that is lacking in many films today. I'm not sure that it is worthy of any Oscars, but given what we've seen so far . . . Anyway, I give it three out of four stars and recommend it. If not for the history, than go see it for a wonderful performance from a young, but surely up and comming cast.

I saw many historical points that were good but mostly it was just made up crap. The movie shouldn't have been so washed out with drama and had more of a historical feeling to it. The English were so stereotyped just to make them more EVIL. I didn't think there was any need to show them shooting wounded, shotting children, and burning people inside a church, other than to make the audience hate them even more. Then they went to all extremes to make the one Oficer become the devil just to have a poorly shot showdown at the end with Mel Gibson ala Gladiator. This just didn't make sense to me. I don't see why they had to have this character. He was just there to make the storyline a bit more formula.

They should have had much more history. They should have shown much more of the war driving cornwallis back to Yorktown, and more of the battle of Yorktown for that matter. All the filler with his son and the girl (the scene where the girl stood up in church and told off the elders was laughable as well) should have been cut, there was no reason to make this movie 3 hours long other than Dean Devil wanting to make an epic piece of historical blashpemous crap. And all during watching this I couldn't stop thinking that this great American Character they created is being played by an Australian.

The screen writers of this should never work again, all they did was take a few historical points they probably pulled from an elementary school textbook, and plugged in the characters from other movies and added a few 90's politically correct motif's like the slave wanting to fight and get along with the bigots. And don't tell me a wealthy plantation landowner from the south actually PAID his slaves. Don't make me laugh any harder. At this point who cares about historical accuracy, lets have an earthquake cause a tital wave and nock out the French fleet and have the english crucify the soldiers and line them up on the roads. That would make the movie more entertaining, no?
 

I would have loved to see a film much like you explain, the war in the South, or the battles Cornwallis fought to get to Yorktown; but I'm not certain the rest of the world would. Overall it was good entertainment and doing what it was written to do - that is generate income. However, you do hint at a very interesting question: If the British were made out to be "EVIL", how will their decendants view the movie once it opens in the United Kingdom? Now thats what I'm waiting for!

But just as quickly, they toss all this good setup out the window. It becomes a simple revenge melodrama. They piss off Mel, and he grabs his monogrammed tomahawk and turns into the terminator. Now I like these kind of movies too, so I was prepared to shrug my shoulders, relax and see a dumb summer action movie.

But then they don't even do this right. The movie devolves into a series of extremely violent but hokey situations, fakey relationships, cliches galore, and trite attempts at tying up all the plot's loose ends. The worst thing about this, is that it's all done in the name of "historical accuracy".

The film, IHMO, is *not* historically accurate at all. And I'm not saying that as a stickler for getting a proper history lesson at the expense of seeing a good movie. I like dumb action movies as much as the next guy. But the story is so cliched and manipulative that the what little historical accuracy is achieved on the part of the Smithsonian-advised production designers/costumers (etc) is wasted on situations that are totally implausible.

For example, Mel's slaves are "conveniently" freedmen working for wages. Joely Richardson's plantation slaves are very accurately costumed, but seemingly happy (yes happy!), and only exist in the film so the British can blow them away (to alert the main characters that they're in danger, kinda like the pack-bearers in a Tarzan movie who get killed off so the main characters know to duck). Finally, Mel's family escapes to a real place, Gullah island, populated by escaped slaves (real-life historical reenactors who sing Gullah-dialect songs and practice traditional Gullah crafts). All this "historical accuracy" is a bust, because when Mel's family arrives, none of the islanders even asks what a bunch of white slaveowners are doing in their village, or who the hell they are! All they do is provide happy, singing local color, and imply that America was racially harmonius and united against the British. But mostly, Gullah island is just like the Ewok village in Return of the Jedi. I kid you not! Barf! And how come the movie takes place over 7 years time, but at the end, Mel's kids haven't aged a day? And how come a bunch of swamp-based guerilla fighters always seem dressed immaculately? Especially Mel in his suit and starched collar? And why do battles always take place at dawn or dusk, and the sun always backlights everyone? And how come after he totally alienates his kids, they all suddenly love him because it's convenient to the plot?

And the cliches! The British are the usual bunch of stereotypical effeminate jerks. There are three scenes in which British leaders are told bad news while being dressed or shaved. The evil villain has no depth. All he does is kill stuff evilly. If there were baby seals to club and whales to harpoon, he'd do it in each scene. SPOILER ALERT: he even gets shot, and while seemingly dead, suddenly springs back to life to kill a major character. Is this cliche? Just rent Halloween 1,2,3,4; Friday the 13th 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 & 8; and all the Freddy Kruger movies to find out! Oh yeah, and Mel pulls the same move later on. Twice in one movie. Yecch.

And the worst thing that happens in the Patriot, is that LOTS of people die (probably a higher body count than the actual war). Mel loses half his family. A guy loses his wife and child so he blows his brains out. An entire church full of the guerilla fighters' loved ones is burned to death. Yet at the end, everyone is way too happy, AS IF NONE OF IT EVER HAPPENED! Un-freakin-believable. And the attitude of the film makers is "see, you're seeing something really profound and moving". No I'm not! I'm just seeing a blah action movie with characters who use Freddy Kruger-Fu in lieu of intelligence or a good plot.

There are so many more problems like this, they are beyond counting. There are so many, no matter how much I wanted to like the Patriot, I couldn't ignore them. After 2 hours and 40 minutes of trying to like the Patriot, all it did was make me want to grab a monogrammed tomahawk and exact vengeance on the film makers.

I should have known--Emmerich and Devlin made Stargate, Godzilla and Universal Soldier. They just got lucky with ID4.
 

that just about sums up the entire movie. what a waste.

>>>I should have known--Emmerich and Devlin made Stargate, Godzilla and Universal Soldier. They just got lucky with ID4. >>>

ID4 was a piece of crap too. Filmakers need to learn that they can't base there creativity on other movies they have seen, and what they think the audience will go see.

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Greg Mueller
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut
 

say what you will about it being a business, its still an artform.
 

There are, but they don't have the bucks to make the movies they want. Reason? First you have to make a product that sells, so you can have money to make the product you want.
We'd all like to be rich and retire and dable in whatever turns us on. But first you got to make the bucks. Then you get to play

Also, studios have stockholders they have invested their dough so they can make money and retire and dabble in whatever they want. The studios have to keep the stockholders (investers) happy by making profits for them.
It all revolves around money. First you get it then you get to spend it. As far as filling revival houses, most of the time revival houses die out, unless they're in a college type town where they can sell to a market that goes to alternative type film places for whatever reasons they have (sometimes I think they go because they think they're suppose to, to be cool).
Anyway the bottom line is always cash. You can live without it, but it's a lot more fun with it.

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Greg Mueller
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut
 

I don't want to use this forum in an unitended way, but I would like to know why many of you see this movie as historically inacurate? Steve, I think your eye for detail is great, however, I feel some of your generalizations are wrong. Slavery for example. I'm not an apologist for the institution of slavery, but there were two different eras of slavery in North America. those eras being the Colonial years, and the second being the American-Nation type that we mostly see in movies and history books. Colonial slaves communities were smaller than those that would develop in places like Alabama and Mississippi, and yes (contrary to popular post-Civil War belief), some planters freed their slaves giving them land and equipment if they stayed close by. This is the "slavery" we see represented in the film. Since these places were their homes the former slaves willingly stayed much like you or I would want to stay where we were born. Furthermore, these men and women defended there homes against agression from thieves, troublemakers, and in frontier regions, the natives, and therefore DID NOT "only exist in the film so the British can blow them away". Lastly, for those scenes at Gullah, these communities both faced a common enemy: the British. I think Ben Franklin summed this up perfectly when he said, "We must all hang together, or surely we'll hang seperately."

As politically correct Americans we don't want to admit that the same things we tried to prevent in places like Bosnia and Kosovo, were the actions that helped us win our independence from the British. The Revolution was more violent than you could possibly imagine. Read some the primary sources at your local library or even here on-line. Its brutal stuff! Hell, I think it would even make some at Amnesty Internation shutter. The character Tavington in "The Patriot" is actually based on a real British Cavalry officer named Banastre Tarelton (or as we called him on this side of the pond: "Bastard" Tarelton). What you see in the film is esentially what happend. This man was a butcher. He caused so many problems in Virginia in 1780-81, that the state capital was moved from Williamsburg to Richmond and Governor Thomas Jefferson had to resign for fear of his life if he was captured. Mel Gibson's character Benjamin Martin is also based on a real colonial fighter named Francis Marion, and yes, Marion's tactics were hit-and-run as shown on screen.

To say this film was entirely historically inacurate is FALSE. Things were portrayed a little differently in some scenes than what may have actually happend, but for the most part this is fairly factual stuff. Were there holes in the plot? Of course, but from the stand point of history I liked what I saw and I'm sticking to it.

Aaron

Then you have achieved financial independence in this area and you can indulge yourself as you wish. If you have an endless supply of cash and don't have to payback any backers, then you can do pretty much as you wish whether its making films to suit your fancy or whatever. Most people are not so fortunate.
I have often compained (to whomever will listen) that I believe there is an incredible amount of talent and intelligence out there, that we will never hear from because they don't have the avenues (money) to make their presence known. I bet there is someone walking around right now with the cure for cancer or aids locked in their brain, and we'll never know because they will never be able to develop their talents because they have to dig ditches to make ends meet. Capitalism is definately a double edged sword, but still the best system around.

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Greg Mueller
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut