“The Patriot” comes to brutal life in the ensuing slaughter–savage, bloody, shocking. Benjamin’s rage turns him into a beast, hacking away at already dead bodies, and for a moment it seems as if this epic may take us into unchartered waters, presenting us with an unhinged hero whose barbarism is indistinguishable from his heroism. The moment passes quickly, however. Just hours after arming his children and undergoing a psychotic episode, a quickly recovered Benjamin is trying to stop his 18-year-old son Gabriel (Heath Ledger) from riding off to war, and acting as if nothing has occurred. Except now Benjamin has joined the cause and will become a legend leading his brave band of militiamen against the Redcoats.
Gibson gives the part his all, but he can’t create a coherent character: the movie won’t let him. This handsome, impressively mounted, sometimes gripping studio production has a split personality. It has so many agendas to fill and so many demographics to please that it often feels as if it were written by a committee of studio executives and not by the credited screenwriter, Robert (“Saving Private Ryan”) Rodat. A harrowing battle scene (for the boys) will be followed by a tepid romantic interlude (teen idol Ledger’s dull courtship of Lisa Brenner, for the girls). Shameless sentimentality is presented back to back with unblinking scenes of the mass extermination of women and children. Comic relief is sprinkled in small, regular doses (collapsing rocking chairs, foppish Brits). Demonstrations of the nightmare of war go hand in hand with flag-waving paeans to patriotism, stirred up by a John Williams score working overtime for uplift.
Great attention may have been paid to the accuracy of the uniforms, but “The Patriot” is stamped from beginning to end with a 21st-century sensibility. A subtheme dealing with the freed slaves who served in the Revolutionary Army is presented with civics-lesson condescension (the reformed racist soldier telling his black comrade in arms it’s an honor to serve beside him). If the South Carolina of 1778 looked like this House and Garden version–gentrified, spick and span, wealthy–you’d wonder why anyone would feel the need to fight a revolution. If you didn’t know any better, you’d come away thinking the War for Independence was caused by a couple of rotten-apple British officers whose nastiness pushed the Colonies over the edge.
Yet there’s no denying that Emmerich’s film, though a good half hour too long, keeps us watching. For all the expensive window dressing, it’s a Mel Gibson revenge melodrama at heart, and its drawing card is violence. The single most memorable shot is of a cannonball tearing the head off an unknown soldier. Emmerich (“Independence Day”) and editor David Brenner give us massive battle scenes that demonstrate the suicidal folly of 18th-century warfare–those formalized engagements where rows of tightly bunched soldiers offered themselves up for certain oblivion. Benjamin knows better: his militia is successful because it has mastered the guerrilla-style art of ambush. The writer of “Private Ryan” may want to sound a cautionary note about the horror of war, but it’s these visions of carnage that get our blood racing. Up until now, movies about the American Revolution have been regarded in Hollywood as a box-office kiss of death. If “The Patriot” breaks the curse, it’s because it’s really “Lethal Hatchet, Part One.”
The PatriotColumbia Opens June 28
