Hey folks, Harry here with... Yup... that guy. John Robie, known trouble maker and all around scoundrel who loves to steal peeks at films as they're being made. Robie has a couple of nitpicks about the film, but agrees that it is a wonderful movie nonetheless and could be improved with a couple of tweaks... Personally these tweaks didn't bother me, but... You know... Heh.. Here's Robie...
I like war movies. Not because I watch them and feel like I’m actually going through the war and not because I want to live vicariously through the characters. There isn’t one veteran who comes back from a war with glowing, happy memories, and it’s near idiotic to assume that some pasted-over, two hour treatment of events can pass as a true document of the real horrors that the men who really fought went through. I like war movies because I like to see things blow up, I like to see people who embody all the strength and courage and honor that is easy to write about but in reality takes a soul of iron to muster, and I like to see big things go bang. I mentioned the blowing up part twice, didn’t I? If you can throw a few great characters into the mix, I’ll love you more. If you can give me an engaging story, something more than man-goes-in-man-blows-away-lots-of-people-man-gets-out, I’ll make sweet, sweet love to you.
I write, I get excited, things come out and I apologize.
The Patriot is one hell of a fun movie. The story is there, the characters are there and boy is the war ever there. One of the most enjoyable things about the film is that it basically quashes the stodgy images of the Revolutionary War gleamed from textbooks. This is ugly stuff, on some levels modern war at its most base. You read about cannons, how they were used. You ever really think, though, what a cannon ball could do if it hit not the side of a fort or a ship but a human being? Pick up the monitor that you’re reading this from. Now imagine a metal ball that heavy hitting your head at over a hundred miles an hour. Imagine your body being peppered with hunks of lead about as big as your thumbnail or a foot-long bayonet entering at the base of your neck, snapping your spine and shredding the flesh as it exits your back. Now imagine that the guy holding that bayonet is twisting it as he does this. Not to mention the fact that during the battle you’re in South Carolina and it’s hotter than hell and you’re wearing a ridiculously heavy outfit that’s making you sweat so much you can hardly see.
It’s not a perfect movie but it sure is an enjoyable one, and it’s a welcome, welcome surprise considering the director and producer at the helm. The dumb fun bubble got big with Stargate, it got bigger with Independence Day and it popped with Godzilla. Emmerich and Devlin got some smarts with this one, really pumped out something they can be proud of not as simply a two-hour thrill ride but as a deep, sometimes utterly devastating film.
Summing up the movie is fairly simple. Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) has had a whole horde of demons chasing him since he fought in the French-Indian war, and when the first flashes of the American Revolution spark up he’s not too keen to join the fight. When Brits kill one of his children and burn his home, though, that heart of darkness sitting inside his chest busts out and Mel joins the cause, leading a militia that includes his son, Gabriel (Heath Ledger), against the redcoats. Lots of fighting, lots of death and lots of wacky comedy ensue. Like the part where a group of townsfolk are burned alive. Ha! That’s rich.
This is the best that Gibson has been in a dramatic role since The Year of Living Dangerously. I actually think he’s better here and hell, this might be his best performance ever. There are some harsh, harsh turns to him in The Patriot, the kind of curl back the lips and go wide with the eyes stuff that filmmakers so often mishandle. Having Gibson be a family man was a smart move. Everyone has seen the loner-against-the-bad-guy movie. Now we get to see the reverberations of a war on a man’s family, on his kids, see the horror on their faces as a war spills over into the front yard of their plantation house and as red coasts come firing out of the trees. The Patriot also wins major points for not cheating (except for two glaring exceptions that are spoken of below). People die here. Kids die. All of it plays across Gibson’s face during the film. The losses he goes through ooze out of the man and the sadness nearly swallows him whole. Not quite giant lizards and flying aliens, is it?
Ledger is excellent. Not early on, but he grows into the part as it progresses. It’s easy to sit back and groan because, yeah, the kid was in a teen comedy. So what, though? He’s got presence in The Patriot. He’s fairly commanding on the screen, and that’s saying quite a bit when Gibson is so good and most of Ledger’s scenes are with him. The supporting cast here is just as strong…with the exception of the main bad guy. The name of the actor escapes me. Actually no it doesn’t, because to escape me I’d have to know it in the first place, wouldn’t I? He ends up being pretty strong by movie’s end but his introductory scene at Gibson’s plantation is a little weak if for no other reason than he plays the prototypical evil Brit guy to the hilt.
There are only to things during The Patriot that tipped fleeting annoyance over into lingering disappointment. They’re fairly minor strokes in a sprawling, huge film. Here they are:
A musket ball doesn’t just hit the flesh, poke through and come out the other end. It’s a miniature cannonball. It’s a hunk of lead that slams into the body at a couple hundred miles an hour and basically destroys whatever is within a few inches of wherever it enters. Bones and sinew are pulverized and blood that was inside the body is now all over the outside of it. I only bring this up because, while so much of the Patriot does a very good job of being historically accurate, there’s one huge, glaring, writer’s convention to the extreme scene late in the film. One of the main characters is shot in the shoulder. He then proceeds to use that arm, bayonet in hand and flailing away. Having the hero or villain get hit in the shoulder with a bullet has been a convention since The Great Train Robbery. It’s nothing new, but having the character use an arm that has just basically been incapacitated is crap of the highest order.
And aliens are mac friendly. The song is the same, the song is always the same…
Alsooneofthecharactersdiesinatotalbullshitmovewhereheshootsatthebadgu ybutDOESN’THITHIMandthebadguypopsupandit’stotally,totallyobviousth atthebadguysisgoingtopopupandkillsaidmaincharacter. I know, annoying as hell, but if you really want to know do the work.
Those are two minor quips and tangents only gone off on because there’s no editors on this site and talking about the effects of muskets is a lot more enjoyable than spurting ejaculate on the page due to the strength of the rest of the movie. Wait a sec, what the hell am I saying?
The Patriot is an unsettling film, and it’s kind of weird to say that because it’s intended to be such a big summer blockbuster. It surely will be just that, but it’ll do so while actually and thankfully treading into some dark territories. There’s one scene in particular here, with Gibson taking his two eight year old sons out to kill the British soldiers that are leading Gibson’s other son to death, that’s about the most disturbing thing I’ve seen on film in the past few years. The only disappointing thing about The Patriot is that the same film in a better director’s hands would’ve been something awe inducing. The Patriot is still excellent…and the print that I saw didn’t even have Williams’ score.
…and if any Revolutionary War expert takes to the talk back and corrects me on the proper effects of a musket ball hit he will not only make my week but maybe make my year.
from the cat house,
John Robie
