I was at a 4th of July gathering when the topic of films came up as it invariably will do when I am around. We were talking about "independence-oriented-films" and the film "The Patriot" came up in his part of the conversation.
He said "YOU'VE NEVER SEEN THE PATRIOT?!" As if this was some sort of crime against cinema-humanity that I had accidentally accomplished. I promised to watch it just as as soon as I got home and since I am a man of my word that is exactly what I did.
Because of the way that my friend was so excited about this film and the fact that its budget was more than $100 million, I perhaps had set myself up for failure before the movie even really got rolling.
So this is how it went for me
I think there is a very good reason why not many films have ever been attempted about the war of Independence or the Revolutionary War - which I believe are both the same thing - and that is because of the fact that the grand scale of the battles that would be necessary for this idea to take place would obviously be very expensive. Combine this with location shots being very difficult to pull off since eliminating modern things from every scene would be quite the handful even in the mere creation of the illusion of being in USA in the 1700's
Assembling this many extras and making sure that nobody has so much as a wristwatch on their arm during all of the scenes must have been extraordinarily difficult not to mention time-consuming and very expensive. It is impressive but I have to say, even on my 50 inch TV it is very evident that the cannonballs hitting the battlefield are noticeably extremely CGI and fake. I'm not saying that a better way to have done this would have been to have actual explosions going on around extras that are likely being paid $100 to be there, but I guess things have changed a lot since 2001 in the special effects department. While I groaned at first, it actually become some of my favorite bits of the movie to revel in how bad some of the CGI actually is.
Let me give you a bit of background that gets us to this point though. Mel Gibson plays the part of Captain Benjamin Martin who wants initially wants the United States to avoid a conflict with England but because his family is targeted for helping wounded Union soldiers (or rebels, or whatever the USA side was called) his family home is burned, his livestock is killed, and because he gets in the way, one of his sons is murdered. This changes him into a warrior of epic proportions for the Continental/rebel/USA army. No real surprise there. We could tell that was going to happen just based on the poster.
The methods he takes in getting the resistance's army to be a feared force and the character development of Captain Martin (Mel Gibson) is a little TOO similar to William Wallace of Braveheart fame. This movie has a lot of parallels to that film and after a while you can't really claim that it is an accident anymore. I think they looked at the massive success of Braveheart and though they could make another one that was essentially the same movie but with USA number 1! being the main focus in this one.
The relationship that Captain Martin has with his sons seems extremely similar to the one that Anthony Hopkins' character has with Brad Pitt and his other sons in "Legend of the Fall" and I will admit that I cringed a bit when this piece of dialogue was directly lifted from one film and put in the other
(son) I am not a child!
(father) you are MY child!
Then Captain Martin invents guerrilla tactics to take on the much stronger British forces in what most people watching would kind of think is an obvious fashion and again, this is very similar to how the Scots got the upper hand on the British in Braveheart and this continues to work until the British flip the script on them and do exactly the same thing in reverse by setting up traps and not revealing their full force in order to lure their enemies into a false sense of arrogance and send them scrambling in defeat.
These are not bad scenes, but they are very predictable as an evil character is introduced very early on and unless you yourself are a child (you are MY child!) you can easily predict the inevitable showdown between Captain Marin and Colonel Tavington
This film is basically a series of easily predicted events that often take place in rather impossible situations that are made possible because the plot needs it to happen. Such things as Captain Martin (before he actually joins the military) taking on an entire squadron of British soldiers with the assistance of his two young sons who have never seen any combat before and easily winning that confrontation. I get why it needs to be in there, but the improbability of things turning out the way that they did is just kind of hokey.
With over $100 million spent on the production of this film I was surprised at how fake a lot of the scenery looked. Some of it with the purple skies indicating dusk looked like something straight out of "Gone with the Wind" rather than a film that was made at the turn of the millennium.
One thing that I cannot find a goo picture of was a swampy, South Carolina base hidden in the middle of a cemetery that is where Captain Martin and his troops rally after ever battle, including defeats. It is implied that this base's location must absolutely be kept a secret in order for their war efforts to continue yet at night, the entire place is lit up with 11,000 candles. It seems to me like this would be ripe for the picking for any would-be scouts.
I guess the various love stories that were built into Braveheart were very popular, they certainly were with me because they didn't seem forced but in The Patriot they are forced and often feel like a complete waste of time. In my mind both the love stories between the main two characters were totally unrelated to the real story here and were thrown in because some producer or writer had determined that this needs to be in the film in order to check all the boxes. What we are left with are scenes that are not moving in any real way, and just make us think "was that Trinity from the Matrix movies?" and no, it isn't Carrie-Ann Moss but it certainly does look like her with a blonde wig
I truly feel as though The Patriot was a money-grab film that was never intended to actually be good. They saw that Braveheat was such a huge hit and now they knew they could do it again and their return on the $110 million was basically guaranteed. Now to be fair, even though this film did take in around $250 million globally, this is not a huge hit since a general rule of thumb is that you can double the production budget of a film to calculate the break even point because of promotional costs associated with getting the film into a global release and getting the Asian countries interested.
Should I watch it?
That is an odd trailer. The brought back the "gruff guy with a voice" to narrate like the did with every film in the 80's and early 90's. They also have the "you're MY child!" line in there so even if you don't watch this you will know I'm not bullshitting you. It's so cringe.
Honestly, had it not been July 4th and I was tired and in bed after a rather disappointing party I probably would have turned this off long before I did.
This film isn't "bad" but it just isn't good enough either. Absolutely nothing unpredictable happens in this and when compared to the super-show that Braveheart was and seeing how they were trying to do the same thing with this one just kind of falls flat. It's not terrible, but it isn't anything special either. The acting is fine, just fine, but it isn't great and this film doesn't really bring out any emotions the likes of which truly great films do.
The battles scenes outside of the clearly fake artillery are solid, I'll give them that but the rest of the movie seems to be a bunch of time-wasting dialogue that simply delays the next battle.
I turned this one off before it was over and I would imagine that exactly all the things that I expected would happen before the ending, did.
I cannot in good faith recommend that anyone watch this. There are much better things out there to be enjoyed. I would rather watch Braveheart again for the 12th time or so, than sit through all of The Patriot for the first time.
this film can be legally streamed on Paramount Plus and Amazon. It can be rented on Fandango and AppleTV as well as many others. It is not on Netflix