Patriot

Written 6 January 2006

Warning: This film review reveals most of the plot of the movie.

This is one of those movies that every young adult in the United States should watch for many reasons. Patriot is a fictional account of the American revolution, following Mel Gibson from just before the war begins to it's end several years later. I recommend this movie not for historical accuracy, but because it demonstrates something that many young people nowadays do not understand in the least: that many people went through sheer hell in order to guarantee their freedom and liberty.

This movie makes it very clear, virtually from the start to the finish, that the American revolution was hard fought, brutal, and bloody. The sacrifices of our forefathers had to go through in order to secure our liberties are very well, if not totally accurately, presented.

The film opens as the American revolution is getting started. Mel Gibson plays Benjamin, a man who has fought in a past war to distinction. He is haunted by some of the things he had to do during those battles, so much so that he refuses to take part in the revolution. He agrees with the sentiment, but feels he's got a family to protect. Besides, he knows first hand how brutal war, and he, can be, as is revealed later.

His elder son, Gabriel, goes off to fight in spite of his fathers wishes, and quickly gains experience at the art of war. Two years later, he is shot while carrying papers for the American army, and staggers back into his fathers house and life. The British army shows up on Benjamin's doorstep, and a new nightmare begins.

His son is captured, his house is burned to the ground, and his second-eldest son is brutally murdered by a British officer in cold blood. Thus begins one of the most gruesome scenes in movie history, as Benjamin and his two other sons grab their weapons and run off to save the eldest boy from certain death. And thus begins the saga of "The Ghost"; Benjamin and his sons kill twenty redcoats, free the eldest and make their way back to the fledgling American army in South Carolina.

Once he returns, he is instantly given a field commission as a colonel, takes command and performs his mission extremely well, a bit too well, as it turns out. His task is to prevent Cornwallis (a major British general) from moving north. This is important, perhaps critical, as General Washington is barely hanging on and the addition of these British troops against him would probably have ended the war with an English victory.

Benjamin, Gabriel and a number of militia use hit-and-run tactics to pin down Cornwallis and his men, keeping them in South Carolina. At first Cornwallis demands civilized tactics, but after a major embarrassment is delivered by Benjamin, he unleashes a ruthless enemy (the same British officer who killed Benjamin's son and burned his home). This results in a massacre of an entire town ... all of the inhabitants burned alive in a church.

As it turns out, the Americans are simply trying to hang on until the French get up the will to intervene in the war. And hang on they do, barely, through battle after bloody battle, sometimes winning, sometimes losing and most often just barely staying alive to fight another day. But the French finally do show up on the scene and the war is won.

Is this movie historically accurate? I doubt it. Oh, the major battles are all portrayed well enough and probably reasonably truthfully, but I suspect that the battle for South Carolina is entirely fictional. It really doesn't matter either way, as the passions of the Americans and the desperation of their struggle is very skillfully demonstrated. I doubt very many of today's generation (or my generation as well, for that matter) have any real comprehension of how hard-fought and costly our freedoms are. If this movie serves no other purpose than to deliver that message, than it's three hours well spent.

My only real complaint is the two-dimensional representation of the British enemies. Cornwallis is shown to be vain, vengeful and proud, and the British are portrayed as simply ruthless and vicious. In war, things are seldom that two-dimensional. The British soldiers and officers had their own reasons for fighting, their own lives and loves and their own stories. As I watched Patriot for the sixth time, I wondered what the exact same movie would look like if it was told from the British point-of-view. It would be very interesting, to say the least.