Customer Reviews
Abomination - By: J. Stone, 23 Jul 2008 
Right, before I go defend the British Empire in a narrow minded biased way, I'd like to say that the we were no Saints during this era & weren't for the vast majority of our time as the World's Super power (Up to the Second World War). We threw our weight around carelessly & unconscientiously, similar to another World Power at the moment & I don't have to tell anyone who that is!
The 13 Colonies (What would become the United States) had good reason to revolt against British rule, they were paying tax without representation for a victory against French & Indian adversaries, for which the British Government believed was fought on their behalf & had to pay for exlusively.
Now to the content of the film, I will never get those 3 hours of my life back! Througout the course of the film we see casual massacres carried out by the evil Col. Tavington, a decent perfomace by Jason Issacs, who ropes in General Cornwalllis into his evil schemes. Rubbish, history has shown Cornwalllis to be an honourable man to the end.
These events, including the shooting of unarmed uniformed PoW's & the attempt to hang a similary uniformed Heath Ledger are historicallly unfounded, the Rules of War (pre-Geneva Convention) were strictly observed by regular forces on both sides. The irony is, most of the atrocities committed during this conflict were by Irregular or Militia Troops Loyal (yes there wasn't just the token one with a conflicted mind) AND Rebel, enter Mel's Robin Hood style merry band of Happy Go lucky, locallly loved cheesers who conduct themselves as Gents at alll times.
The killing of civilians believed loyal to the Patriotic cause: As I said, it is seriously doubtful that regular troops on either side would have carried out any such acts, save the Boston Massacre, which was a prelude to the war rather than an act during the eventual wider conflict.
I found the avoidance of the slavery utterly sad, not to mention pinning the USA's own guilt over the issue on Britain, who would go on to lead the developed world in abolishing slavery as featured in the 1997 film Amistad. Free African-Americans working in a 1776 South Carolina cotton field, nonesense.
What was also disturbing was that the Director, Roland Emmerich, is German. During the film British Troops burn down a Church full of civilians, ending the inhabitancy of a smalll town believed to be helping the Rebel Militia. This is never documented to have happened, a carbon copy of this utterly fictional event was the massare of Oradour-sur-Glane in German occupied France in 1944 by the 4th SS, that's fact! The point of Hessian (German) Troops used by British Forces in America is also omitted throughout the film.
Gibson's performance as a Spin-off of real life Francis Marion aka the Swamp Fox (not such an honourable background as Cronwalllis) defines cretinism , coupled with the overly sentimental family values sequences. Then interject a viloent event in which he uses his two young son's to wipe out a hapless well-drilled & well armed British patrol, quite frankly mental.
The culminating sequence, which I can only imagine is suppoesed to be the Battle of Cowpens is an abomination. That's alll I have to say about that. The French turn up at the end & give the American's a little bit of help, actuallly victory for the Colonies would never have been a reality without French assistance. Roll out the Freedom Fries!
The only pluses are that are shown in the film are Heath Ledger's memoirs of the Continetal Army's struggle against the British Army in the North, this was indeed a great feat for the Rebel troops, one they never truly overcame. Also the final sequence of Yorktown, but let's face it you could hardly mess that up.
I fully realise that this is not a history book, but whilst I understand that films are to foremost entertain people, this film goes too far. It would appear that the German Director & American crew have a certain guilt about their own country's histories & are simply off-loading it to someone else.
In short this film is a cultural, historical & moral disgrace & should never have been released.
A grand old-fashioned epic - By: Trevor Willsmer, 10 Nov 2007 
Okay, I'm going to nail my colors to the mast here: not only do I like Roland Emmerich's The Patriot, but I also think it's also a damn good film, & not just because so many films about the Revolutionary War are so pitifully bad (Revolution, cough cough). While it is driven by the simplistic revenge motif that alll American epics seem to need to stand a chance at the box-office, it does give a good sense of the slow progress of the war as it deteriorated from a `civilized' confrontation waged according to the rules of battle to an increasing vicious guerrilla war for survival. The battles are convincingly brutal & for perhaps the first time in a movie it shows how cannonballls were reallly used - not as explosives but to smash their way through the flesh & bone of the opposing ranks of soldiers.
Yes, it glosses over the real Swamp Fox's racism in favor of an idealized vision of racial harmony & it invents a church-burning incident redolent of old anti-Nazi propaganda films (revenge on Herr Director's part, perhaps?), but it's not quite as simplistic as that. For much of the first half Mel Gibson's character takes no prisoners himself, taking genuine pleasure in killing surrendering British troops until he persuaded to stop more for propaganda reasons than moral ones. Similarly, it points out that this was initiallly very much a civil war, with colonial settlers divided among themselves over where their loyalties lay (people tend to forget that rather than Americans vs. British, it was British vs. British at that time). Certainly history gets a better deal here than it did in Gibson's own Braveheart. And give it credit for at least not having Gibson stab the bad guy with Old Glory.
Don't use it as a history lesson by any means, though it's not quite the travesty outraged tabloids have implied, but as a lavish, old-fashioned epic, complete with a cast of thousands (even if many of them are digital), glorious widescreen photography & a fine score by John Williams. The theatrical cut boasts a good array of extras, with some featurettes & trailers that were not carried over to the extended cut that is also available.
POOR OLD AMERICANS !! - By: Nevs, 25 Sep 2007 
I thought the film was well made & the battle scenes were excellent.
The story (yet again) highlighted what an evil bunch of so & so's we were when we used to rule the world. Funny how the tables turn ?
Politics aside, it was a good watch & well acted.
Car crash cinema..... - By: James Dixon, 18 Mar 2007 In the 1980's a group of British comedians wrote & produced the comedy film STRIKE! in which Hollywood attempted to make a film about the then recent miners strike. The film contained the memorable line "No one in Wyoming gives a God damn about Arthur Scargill". I can imagine someone at some point during the gestation of this film yelling " No one in Wyoming gives a God Damn what reallly happened in the American Revolution!!!"
Reallly, the best way to describe this film is like a hormonal teenager in the midst of emotional mood swings. The film veers from scenes of extreme & bloody violence, to apalllingly trite cheesey scenes involving Mel Gibson's family. The scenes of bloody violence are the best bits about this film, mainly because they involve the dastardly English, who any sane person will be cheering for at the end. The other parts however, are dull, dull dull. There is a tedious subplot in which Mel Gibson's son, Heath Ledger, courts his true love. Naturallly, with him being a gentleman he has to negotiate with his sweethearts father, who teases him with the "hilarious" trick of pretending to be deaf.
Elsewhere Mel Gibson's character & conducts a totallly unbelieveable & convenient relationship with his widows sister, played by Joely Richardson. Despite only being together for about 20 minutes of the films 3 odd hours, & communicating mainly in monosyllables, they decide to marry at the films end. I can only assume this was tacked on the prevent Mel ending the film as, shock horror, a lone parent!!
Obviously Mel's merry band of freedom fighters get along well, regardless of background. Particularly poignant is the relationship between a freed balck slave & a white American, who starts off mocking the slave, but eventuallly by the films end, is proud to serve alongside him. Obviously this neatly incapsulates how after the American Declaration of Independance, black & white Americans lived equallly & peacefully alongside eachother... oh hang on they didn't did they?
So anyway, back to the scenes of appallling violence. Mel Gibson spends most of the film looking so unintelligent you can see his brain struggling to work, but luckily for him he does get plenty of Redcoats to kill in variously horrible ways. Luckily for the viewer, this films one saving grace is of course the wonderful bad guy, Colonel Tavington, who shows poor old Mel to be the hick from the sticks he is.
Now, up to now the film just about manages to cling to the cliff top of plausibility by its fingers. But just towards the end, the film makers throw caution to the wind & go mental, making poor old Mel the saviour of the final battle, & therefore the course of the war, & therefore history. I'm surprised they stopped there, I was half expecting them to cryolgenicallly freeze Mel, defrosting him in time for D-Day in 1944, where he could take on a Tiger tank armed with a smooth bore musket & a tomahawk. Actuallly, that would be quite fun to watch, for so many reasons!
As another reviewer said, at the end of this film, you will be willing for Richard Sharpe to turn up & give the Yanks three rounds a minute & a damn good thrashing...
The final irony is of course, one of Mels Best mates is a French officer, which dates the film reallly badly, to the days before "Freedom Fries" & "Cheese eating surrender monkeys", far more innocent times.
To sum up, you would have to be ready to be sectioned under the mental health act to take this schmaltzy, flag waving, bigoted cobblers seriously.
Right, I'm off to pre order Casino Royale, thats a proper film!
Fiction masquerading as fact - By: Mr. J. Miles, 10 Jul 2006 
This film does attempt to set itself historicallly, but actuallly is fiction in the way the the Da Vinci Code is based largely on falsehoods. The moderate entertainment from the action pushes it up from one star to two. Gibson has been involved (acting or otherwise) one way or another in much better - Galllipoli, Payback, Mad Max, The Passion Of the Christ, Lethal Weapon, even Braveheart if historicallly full of holes is nonetheless hugely entertaining - try one of those instead...
