Search - The Patriot (Extended Cut) on DVD

Brutal, emotional, lovely couldashouldabeen brilliant film

Mercy Bell | 09/13/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I'll risk getting raised eyebrows from fellow cinephiles and history buffs, but "The Patriot" is one of my favorite films. It's a film that could have been a brilliant, go-down-in-history epic if not for confining itself to studio-ism, clichés, and historical inaccuracies where it could have done more.

The story of a South Carolinian family during the infamously violent and vicious Southern campaign of the American Revolution, the film is the saga of the Martin family caught in the midst of a historical shift. The film takes complicated themes that were played out constantly during the war but are often hard to grasp or forgotten today and vividly brings them to life: neighbors killing each other, families torn apart, atrocities, the use of militia, and the cost of a war that is played out on the homefront. The violence is used to numb and shock you. In the film's goriest scene (and one of it's best) we see Benjamin (Gibson) and his two young sons chase down a British squadron after tragedy befalls his family. With pure hatred and barbarity, and using the advantage of a forest he and his sons know as their home and which the British find only a foreign jungle, he slays and reduces the squadron to one man. He chases down a soldier and hacks him to pieces in a creek as his sons watch in horror. It's the sight of a grieving man trying to bring order back into his life with tactics he and militiamen around the South of both loyalties were adept at, and were readily used to wage war upon each other. This is what the film does masterfully, it renders an image of savage violence and atrocity inflicted upon a colonial population and how it affected the individuals involved.

The fact that they kill off as many characters as they do is risky, but true to the brutality and unpredictability of life and history, and gives the film the air of a true tragedy because of how much we become attached to these people (which is one reason why I have a problem with the ending). Unfortunately, the acts committed, like the film's two most emotionally gut-wrenching scenes of the burning of a church with people inside and the skirmish that follows (all breathtakingly photographed against a slate gray sky and beautiful autumn colors which only heightens the tragedy of it all), plus the massacres, torchings, and killing of prisoners, are shown as a strictly British versus American problem, where in reality the colonists were by and large the ones fighting each other in this manner. It was portrayed as far too black-and-white a dilemma, where the actual history would have been more complex and interesting. I find this frusterating because the film had already taken so many chances, such as having young boys deeply involved in the violence, harsh and tainted characters, that it would have been easy to have gone one step further. And they got the British uniforms wrong to boot. At least we get Jason Isaac's riveting and seductive performance as Tavington.

The drama of the film, where it may contain some stock scenarios, mediocre dialogue and characters, is equally witty, poignant, and effective thanks to the acting and directing. The fight scenes never bore. There are many moments where the camera finds the perfect place to watch Gabriel, without an ounce of treacle, wave goodbye to his fiancee (Heath Ledger turns in a lovely, sensitive, and entirely convincing performance as a young revolutionary/big brother but without acting like a starched shirt collar); to watch Benjamin bark an order or hug his daughter (Mel plays a great daddy), for Tavington to say something piercing, for someone to die. It's moments like these that create utterly normal, real people in the midst of turmoil.

This film brought me to another time and place amidst the trials of a breathing, aching family. It recreates the feel of the time so tangibly, it picks you up and plunks you right into the middle of a humid, violent place where tensions are heightened and you're constantly looking over your back to see if your family is safe, to check your loyalties. Despite some unfortunate writing - the useless aunt, whitewashing over slavery, the whole last 20 minutes of mindless explosions and revisionism which are a weird and painful shift from the brutal,visceral tone of the rest of the film - you get to know a lot of the characters on a very personal level and we begin to understand the fine lines between freedom and loyalty, taking risks or managing the threat, priorities and principles. When Benjamin doesn't want to support a war because of his family or see his sons go to fight you feel how desperate he is,but you also understand Gabriel's youthful idealism and urgency and his love for his wife (although she's fairly annoying) and his cause. We see how feelings for family, country, one's past, and enemy intermingle and how it becomes one big tangled confused smashed gory mess.
The film is probably one of the best looking films out there, with stunning cinematography showcasing gorgeous Spanish moss, multicolored skies, mist, twilight, swamps. Cinematography - and production design - use the natural landscape and the period as a living part of the film's setting and just pulls us into it, help create that world, and serve to enhance much of the dramatic material. Top it off with John Williams' score which evokes the Revolution and the era and the human drama of it all.

Although "The Patriot" isn't as masterful as it easily could have been, it's still a film worth seeing for everything it does well, which is a lot. Despite problems, this is how history should be treated, as a vivid, emotional, palpable story - a story - about people that is as thrilling and gut-wrenching as it was, and not merely a dry academic lesson. I would love to see other films pick up where "The Patriot" left off, take the initiative to continue and build upon what this film did so beautifully and to succeed where it didn't. Film can treat us to a different and similar world where we can attempt to understand the thrills and the woes, the joys and sorrows of the time and fate of those who lived their lives out before us.

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