The Patriot (2000)

When An American Carol came out as with every time a movie is labeled or promoted as a "conservative film" and turns out to be particularly bad (as AAC was said to be; I only use "said" because I haven't seen it myself) there was some discussion about whether conservatives "can" make good movies (or "good art"). It'd be a poorly-framed debate no matter what. It wrong-foots the "Yes" side from the start and it assumes that the political beliefs of filmmakers have to inform their movies and that most films can be said to have a specific ideology. There are plenty of "issue films," earnest dramas with heavy political undertones and satires that "really want to make you think," but most of the time the people behind the movie you're watching only wanted to tell a good story that would appeal to the broadest possible audience.

And to be a filmmaker with conservative views is a separate thing from making a conservative film. There are conservative films (or films that can be interpreted as such). Often those films are made by people with liberal political beliefs. Trying to determine the "world view" of a film (if that's the kind of thing you like to do) tends to be more complicated than figuring out whether the director or writer was pro- or anti-Bush. It's rarely issue-specific (most movies aren't about "politics" as it's narrowly defined) and how do you begin to do it when it's a period film? The generational saying is "Today's liberal is tomorrow's conservative." If you release a film that's anti-slavery you're making a liberal statement by the standards of the 1830s while also representing the current widely-held consensus. And if you try to do something that's accurate to a time period where the customs and attitudes of the characters are foreign to us without inserting any anachronistic viewpoints to assure the audience that "this is wrong" are you making a "conservative film?" 

It'd be better to separate what a liberal or conservative movie is from what we think those terms mean today. Make it more broadly philosophical and it's easier (and less controversial) to put films into those categories. You can make a good conservative movie as easily as you can a good liberal movie. There are plenty of both. But there are limitations or restrictions. Conservative comedies are hard to do well (going back to AAC). You can't make fun of the disenfranchised. That's not going to work. You can't make fun of traditional institutions and figures in authority. You don't find them amusing. So, you're left with ridiculing either an exaggerated version of the opposition (liberals do this, too, but "straw man comedy" tends to be as weak as a straw man argument) or "how the kids act now." The latter idea is basically what most conservative movies are about. 

Say that conservatism is situational. It's an attitude towards change. In a conservative comedy, you can't figure teenagers out these days with their music and their hairstyles. A conservative tragedy will be elegiac. In a conservative drama, the protagonist will act to preserve something worth the effort. In those terms any kind of conservative movie can be effective. "Reactionary films," though, will almost never work by definition, and if they do it'll only be as a comedy. You can't make a good dramatic film where the story or the character arc of the protagonist goes back to where it was before the movie started. For example (four paragraphs later): The Patriot.

It's 165 minutes long, so while I promise to make my summary as brief as I can if you're assuming the rest of this will be as tiresome as the introduction and want to skip ahead I will attempt to recreate the plot using some of the film's IMDB Keywords: "American Revolution / Rocking Chair / Family Relationships / House Burning / Loss of Family / Rage / Child Uses Gun / One Man Army / Axe Throwing / Shot in the Leg / Stabbed in the Head / Shot in the Chest / Dark Comedy / Stabbed in the Arm / Shot in the Back / Garden Party / Shot in the Hand / Shot in the Shoulder / Dead Boy / Pretending to be Dead / Crying Man / Haunted by the Past / Showdown / Stabbed in the Throat / Based on True Story / Historically Inaccurate." I've kept some of you with me by making this movie sound a lot more entertaining than it is. Let me fix that. 

The film begins in 1776 on the South Carolina farm of Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson). No, go back. The film begins with a chest with a tomahawk and an old uniform in it being closed and a voiceover from Benjamin (that's actually, not to get too far ahead, a flash forward to a line he'll say later) which goes: "I have long feared that my sins would return to visit me. And the cost is more than I can bear." Title up. 

Here's where I wanted to do something pedantic and remind you what the definition of "patriot" is to set up how far afield this movie goes from making its hero look like one. But the first online dictionary I went to (and was my mistake going to an online dictionary? Maybe) had an alternate definition. The first is the one you'd expect: "a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion." The second, however, says "a person who regards himself or herself as a defender, especially of individual rights, against presumed interference by the federal government." Don't worry. I'm not going to waste any more of your time with a four-paragraph discussion of "liberal dictionaries" vs. "conservative dictionaries" but I think the person who added the second definition did so after watching this movie. 

Benjamin Martin is a widower with seven children and a lot of land. There are also a number of men and women of African descent around but, as will be established later, none of them are slaves.

Not a Slave

I'm not going to spend much time on historical accuracy. If you want to find out what the movie gets wrong, there are IMDb and Wikipedia pages listing every error (and there are a lot of them). The script fictionalizes historical figures and events, invents characters and changes the timeline, all for dramatic effect. I don't have a problem with that. What they couldn't do if they wanted to keep it remotely grounded in history was change the setting from South Carolina. The easiest way to get around the slavery issue would've been to give Benjamin a more modest farm without any slaves (or Not Slaves). Maybe he wouldn't have looked as impressive and it might not have been as plausible that he's a member of the colonial assembly (and I know how exciting it sounds that he is; we'll get to it that part soon) but does he have to look that impressive or be a member of the assembly? No, and it would've saved the filmmakers the embarrassment of this:

"Sir, we're not slaves. We work this land. We're .. freed men." 

So, a letter carrier arrives to a John Williams crescendo about as grand as the one heard when the Brachiosaurus is first seen in Jurassic Park.

Benjamin's two oldest sons, Gabriel (Heath Ledger), 18, and Thomas, 15, have what appears to be an inordinate amount of interest in the contents of the mail but they have to wait to find out what's in it because their father is busy failing to build a chair properly for the seventh or eighth time

(it's one of the movie's running jokes that Benjamin can't get the hang of chair-building. They sell it with devices like using one of his daughters -- who hasn't spoken since her mother died -- in a cutaway reaction shot the same way comedies would use a dog) 

and it was a different time then when parental authority was respected and … 

What was in the mail: Gabriel's friend Peter has joined the Continental Army (Benjamin won't let Gabriel go with him) and the assembly has been convened to decide on a levy in support of same. On to Charleston (or, excuse me, Charles Towne. 1776!), where Benjamin's late wife's sister Charlotte (Joely Richardson) lives when she's away from "her plantation along the Santee." They never go to the trouble of having any of these 

characters announce that, despite what you think, they are "freed men." So, go ahead and assume that they're not Not Slaves. 

The assembly debates the levy and by extension the question of independence. Benjamin's old French and Indian war buddy Harry Burwell (Chris Cooper) is there representing the Continental Army and expects him to speak in support of revolution but Benjamin surprises him (and those who know of Papa Martin's famous "fury .. during the Wilderness Campaign") first by stealing a line from someone else in asking "Why should I trade one tyrant 3,000 miles away for 3,000 tyrants one mile away?" then by explaining that while he believes that the Colonies should govern themselves independently he won't fight in a war and so he won't vote in support of one and have others fight for him. 

"I have seven children," he says. "My wife is dead. Now who's to care for them if I go to war?" The movie then cuts to Aunt Charlotte watching as if to nudge the audience and ask "What's with this guy? She could take care of them, couldn't she?" (Is Mel Gibson really playing a coward? Keep reading and find out!) He suggests continuing with peaceful measures to resolve their grievances with King George. Harry questions his patriotism and says that if his "principles dictate independence then war is the only way." Benjamin's response is "I'm a parent. I haven't got the luxury of principles." (Judging by all of this I can't imagine any of his fellow assembly members ever asked him to speak in support of something they were proposing. When he isn't plagiarizing from others he's announcing that he doesn't have any principles.) 

The assembly votes to support the levy anyway, and outside Benjamin finds Gabriel in line to join the army without his permission. Gabriel questions his father's behavior. Benjamin says that when Gabriel has a family of his own he'll understand. Gabriel's response: "When I have a family of my own I won't hide behind them." Benjamin's response to that: 

Two years pass

Peter didn't make it

and Gabriel writes that he's coming back home as part of the army sent to fight Cornwallis (Tom Wilkinson), who's captured Charles Towne. Thomas, who likes to play with tin soldiers, 

wants to join the army, too, but Benjamin won't let him enlist until he's 17 and gets upset when he finds him wearing his old French and Indian war uniform. "What happened at Fort Wilderness?" Thomas asks. (Keep reading and find ou .. actually, you're reading a plot summary of The Patriot. Go do something else. I'll keep typing. I'll be here when you get back and you can find out then.) 

Cornwallis' army is near the house. Nathan, Benjamin's third oldest, tells his sisters that "They'll probably kill us men. And do Lord knows what to you women." Which is played for a laugh but considering what happens he had a solid read on the situation. (And the director and writer know what's coming so I don't know why this was left in.) Gabriel shows up, wounded from battle. He has dispatches to deliver to the retreating commanders but Benjamin insists that he stay until he recovers. Meanwhile, the Redcoats and the Continentals fight in the Martins' front yard (it's a big front yard).  

In the morning, the family and the Not Slaves treat soldiers from both sides. Enter Colonel William Tavington (Jason Isaacs). At his own frame rate. To his own theme that helpfully lets you know before he says so much as a word how you should feel about him. 

If it didn't quite come across in the above clip here's the character of Tavington in a picture: 

He orders the Martins' home burned for "harbor[ing] the enemy" (but that isn't fair! They were helping wounded men from both sides!), presses the Not Slaves into the service of His Majesty (but that isn't fair! They're Not Slaves! It isn't right to force someone into another's service. Aunt Charlotte, back me up on this. Aunt Charlotte?) and when the dispatches are found inside angrily demands to know who carried them. Gabriel steps forward to say that he did, pretending not to know his family for their protection. Tavington has him arrested to be hanged as a spy (before casually mentioning that the Martins' livestock will be destroyed and their horses taken; I don't know if it's Tavington or the screenwriter Robert Rodat who's remembering every other line that, oh yeah, there's another way he can be cruel.) 

Benjamin protests under "the rules of war." See the above photo. "Would you like a lesson, Sir, in the rules of war? Or perhaps your children would?" Benjamin backs down. A British Lieutenant (or Robert Rodat) remembers about the rebel wounded and asks what's to be done with them. "Kill them." Thomas tells his father to "do something" as Gabriel is tied up. Benjamin only tells him to "be quiet," so he runs at the troops holding Gabriel, knocks one of them over and yells for Gabriel to run. Tavington shoots Thomas in the back 

then calls him a "stupid boy" as he dies in his father's arms. 

So, Tavington has burned down his house, killed his livestock, stolen his horses, abducted his Not Slaves, had mass murder committed in front of his children (by finishing off those rebels before they leave), killed his second born and is taking his first born to be killed, too. Half an hour into this thing, it's time to get going. Is Benjamin really a coward?

He goes into the house before it's reduced to rubble to get his tomahawk and his firearms out of the chest, tells his youngest children to hide and brings his next two oldest sons with him to ambush the Redcoats in the woods. This (that Benjamin has his sons who are either pre-pubescent or only slightly pubescent come with him to shoot a bunch of guys) is an element of the film I actually like. Why make a period film if you're not going to be of the period (those Not Slaves are Not of the Period)? They even take the time to show that the younger of the two, while still being willing to do what his father tells him to, is terrified.

That doesn't mean it looks at all reasonable that their party of three is able with their muskets to pick off a dozen soldiers at a casual distance of about twenty or thirty feet, but it is a place where the filmmakers tried to do something different and it'd be unfair not to give them credit for that. I said a dozen, but there are twenty men transferring Gabriel. The last eight or so Benjamin handles with his tomahawk. 

With Gabriel safe, they all go to Aunt Charlotte's. She tries to tell Benjamin that Thomas' death wasn't his fault and he's done nothing for which he should be ashamed (I don't think he told her about throwing his tomahawk into the back of a guy who was running away and then chopping him to death with it). "I've done nothing," he replies. "And for that I am ashamed." So, Benjamin's learned a lesson about not acting on your beliefs and .. oh, wait. Gabriel wants to go back to the army but Benjamin forbids him to do so. "Your duty is to your family … Thomas is dead. How many more have to die before you'll heed my word?" 

Gabriel leaves anyway (again) and Benjamin follows. Yes, The Patriot of the title is only joining the army because his son refuses to sit out the war with him. Father and son reunite and look out on the Battle of Camden. Benjamin explains the flaw in the rebels' strategy, which sets up what happens next. Hey, did that guy just get his head taken off by a cannonball?

Yes, he did

They join up with the defeated Continentals. Gabriel picks up a tattered flag. 

"It's a lost cause," says the man who was carrying it. Benjamin tells Harry he has principles now. Harry asks him to lead a guerilla campaign to keep Cornwallis occupied while the Continentals retreat north. We meet Token Frenchman, played by Tcheky Karyo. (Sample quotes from the film: "You actually trust the French to keep their word?" "Eh .. French." "To hell with the French .. ") Benjamin, Gabriel and Frenchy split up to recruit people for the militia.

Gabriel goes to a church where we meet Racist Donal Logue and Rene Auberjonois as the Reluctant Gun-Toting Reverend and see Anne (played by producer Dean Devlin's wife Lisa Brenner) for the second time. She gives a speech inspiring people to join up where she asks why they'd stop "at words" when they were all in favor of independence (if only she'd been there at the beginning to ask Benjamin that). We meet her parents. Her father has (or feigns? It's sometimes unclear) a hearing problem, so there's a bit where Gabriel asks him for his permission to write Anne and he looks confused before Gabriel repeats himself and he says "Oh, write her." The idea is we're supposed to smile at what he must've thought Gabriel said but there's only one other word that begins with a "ruh-" sound that's likely to have produced such a misunderstanding and I don't know if that's particularly funny? (Say what you want about Tavington, but at least we never see him "write" anyone. Tim Roth had already beaten him to that move in Rob Roy and they weren't remaking Rob Roy here. They were remaking Braveheart.) 

Benjamin and That French Guy choose a tavern instead. They're looking for a different sort and they find it. That sort includes Leon Rippy as The Guy With a Wife and Young Son Who Barely Have Any Lines and Have No Plot Importance but We're Repeatedly Shown Though Don't Worry I'm Sure Nothing Bad Will Happen to Them. Inevitably there are arguments between Gabriel's church folk and Benjamin's tavern-goers / French and Indian War veterans, who like to shoot people in the head when they're on their knees surrendering 

and then spit on their corpses. 

Rene Auberjonois: "This is murder." 

Leon Rippy: "Hell, Reverend. They're Redcoats. They've earned it." (and this is before they kill his wife and so .. damn it, I spoiled it).

But, that's not the only source of tension. One of Benjamin's recruits is a slave (the honest-to-goodness kind) who's only fighting at first because if he stays in the militia for a year he'll win his freedom. One of my favorite parts of the movie: Racist Donal Logue asks "What in the hell you gonna do with freedom?" then walks away as the camera stays with the Official Slave while he silently ponders the question. 

The British find out about Benjamin's guerilla band and Tavington is given the job of stopping them. There's a setback where he ambushes the militia in return in a move that you think is clever (hiding soldiers over the ridge and in covered wagons that look like they're only carrying supplies) until you realize that it relies on the trick of the character having the same POV as the audience (Benjamin couldn't see into the wagons? They didn't scout the surrounding area at all?). Eighteen of Benjamin's men are captured and this turn creates the mood for the following scene. 

Gabriel approaches Benjamin (who's melting Thomas' tin solders to make into ammunition) back at camp to ask him what happened during the French and Indian War. "Wherever you go men buy you drinks because of what happened at Fort Wilderness." So, we finally find out. Apparently in reprisal for a brutal raid on a British fort Benjamin and some other men snuck in and I'll let him take it from there:

"We took our time. We cut 'em apart slowly. Piece by piece. I can see their faces. I can still hear their screams. All but two. We let them live. We placed the heads on a pallet and sent them back with the two that lived to Fort Ambercon. The eyes, tongues, fingers we put in baskets. Sent them down the Asheulot to the Cherokee." 

Gabriel says "And men bought you drinks" as though he's surprised but they only did so because they thought he was a psychopath and didn't want to give him an excuse. Also, I know I said I was going to go easy on historical inaccuracies but it's too good not to mention that the only Fort Wilderness ever "to have existed" is at the Disney World Resort. 

The Official Slave (whose name is Occam. Get your head around that) comes back with Racist Donal Logue, whose life he saved ("Life is funny that way." Shut up, Robert Rodat), to tell Benjamin about the missing men, who will be hanged one at a time until they give the rest of them up. Benjamin figures out a way to both save them and embarrass Cornwallis again (another running joke, in service of which they're willing to use Tavington in cutaway gags:) 

and when Tavington confronts him in public promises to kill him before the war is over. When Cornwallis finds out that the captured officers he just exchanged the militiamen for are actually scarecrows in Redcoat uniforms 

he gives Tavington permission to use whatever means he feels necessary to capture Benjamin. (Tavington wants land in America in reward. "Tell me about .. Ohio," he says. What must've happened to you in Ohio, Robert Rodat? "We took our time. We cut 'em apart slowly." O.K. O.K.) Tavington finds out about Aunt Charlotte from one of the loyalist assembly members (played by Adam Baldwin) and goes after her. There's a brief scene where it looks like he's about to shoot another Martin kid but Benjamin and the militia show up to distract the Redcoats so everyone can get away .. to hide in a community of [ex-?]Slaves and Not Slaves on the coast. (The Martins might be welcome there but Charlotte?)

But, Tavington has a list of the men in the militia and he's going home-by-home to burn their families out and kill anyone who resists. Leon Rippy's wife and son resist. He doesn't take it well. 

There's a "pow" after this

After that pointlessly grim scene Benjamin gives everyone a one week furlough to see to their loved ones. Gabriel takes this time to marry Anne (complete with ex-slave/Not a Slave/Official Slave music at the reception that sounds disturbingly close to the "Yub Nub" song the Ewoks perform at the end of the original Return of the Jedi. 

I'd prefer to think John Williams is a little lazy rather than a little racist.) Benjamin uses it to put a move on Aunt Charlotte. (The dialogue in this movie generally isn't poorly-written, but this is my second favorite part after Racist Donal Logue's previous Question for the Ages: 

Benjamin: "May I sit with  you?" 

Charlotte: "It's a free country. Or at least it will be.")

Tavington decides that Benjamin may not be sufficiently motivated to follow through on his earlier promise to kill him so when Anne and her parents go back to town they are led with the rest of the population into the church where they are all .. burned alive inside. (Another exception to not nitpicking about historical details: No exaggeration here. They turn Tavington and the Redcoats into Nazis. This scene isn't based on anything that happened during the Revolutionary War. It's something that the Nazis did in World War II France.) The director Roland Emmerich thought that with how desensitized audiences are today to violence they might say "Burning a town full of civilians alive inside a church? Yawn." so he included a few shots as the smoke gathers to remind us that we like/d that Anne girl. 

Tavington tells Adam Baldwin (credited as "Loyalist/Captain Wilkins") "This'll be forgotten." As if to implore the audience not to forget .. something that the Redcoats never did. (And with Adam Baldwin -- "Animal Mother" from Full Metal Jacket -- being around it makes it even harder not to think of all of this as an attempt at some inverted Vietnam War scenario where the Americans are the Vietcong. We'll never forget My Lai, you limey bastards!) 

Gabriel, the Reverend & co. go after Tavington's Dragoons. 

Interrupt their outdoor reenactment of Excessive Force. (Tavington's playing Thomas Ian Griffith.) 

Tavington shoots the Reverend (because at this point why not?)

Gabriel shoots Tavington. 

Pulls out a knife to treat Tavington like they're at Disney World. 

But, no! Tavington's only playing possum. 

Gabriel gets stabbed. (Any dogs around? Tavington might want to kick in their skulls later.) 

And dies. In his father's arms. 

Benjamin looks as weary of this as I am. Harry's back with the Continentals but can't talk Benjamin into saving the Revolution. (This is where we get the "And the cost is more than I can bear" line). It's only when he finds the tattered flag from before that Gabriel took and sewed back together that he's reminded that the Redcoats are Nazis and this war is worth fighting.

He shows up in time for the battle with flag in-hand

You're right, Harry. Benjamin's in no position to grandstand at this point. 

and tells the Generals how to defeat Cornwallis. Racist Donal Logue becomes Donal Logue. 

Because if the American Revolution accomplished anything, it was racial harmony in South Carolina.

Roland Emmerich remembers that cannonballs were used in these battles (and cannonballs can be awesome).

Benjamin uses a musket as a baseball bat. 

Sees Tavington and wants to start swinging but Francois de France says "Wait! You have to inspire us all first!" 

Benjamin says "Got it." 

Tavington's still around. Benjamin starts to charge. 

Points the tip of the staff out

and for the briefest of moments I think Tavington is about to be impaled with the American flag and I'm ready to take back everything bad I said about this movie. But instead Benjamin uses it to unhorse him and start a Duel of the Fates. 

(While Benjamin is all the heroes of the Star Wars prequels wrapped into one I admit that Tavington doesn't work as Darth Maul. Maul's too nuanced.) 

Another aside here: whatever anti-war message the film tries to convey it still has the scene so many other war movies have where in the middle of battle everyone else clears a path so two important enemies can settle their differences without being interrupted.

There's a line I like in The Thin Red Line (1998) where the John C. Reilly character matter-of-factly states that "It makes no difference who you are, no matter how much training you got and the tougher guy you might be. When you're at the wrong spot at the wrong time, you gonna get it." In The Patriot, war may be brutal but it isn't random. Benjamin isn't decapitated by a stray cannonball before he can get his revenge (much as Roland Emmerich might want him to be).

So, Tavington gets the better of Benjamin momentarily, turning him around so he can see that even if he does die he can do so knowing that the Americans are going to win the war because he ran around with a flag. 

But, when Tavington goes in for the finisher 

Benjamin ducks (possum again), turns, gives him one in the chest 

and then another in the throat. 

Huzzah! 

Benjamin: "With the war ending .. I take measure of what we have lost. And what we have won." 

Minus 

his two oldest sons, a disobedient pair who challenged his authority and might soon threaten his "Free Drink" status. 

one farm (or, wait. His house is being rebuilt by Ex-Racist Donal Logue, Occam and the others). 

an unknown number of Not Slaves (or, well, those Not Slaves could already be on their way back). 

Plus 

a new wife, a younger version of his dead one who conveniently stayed eligible into her mid-thirties so he could have a spare Putnam to marry. 

her plantation. 

her Official Slaves. 

all the ale he can imbibe.

children who he now knows will kill on command. 

Benjamin gets to hit a reset button and go back five or ten years. Everything that's happened in the film has been so that he could "return to a previous state." 

"Where will you go now?" he asks Harry after the final battle. "Home," Harry says, "to start over." With a newborn son named Gabriel. 

It's a reactionary film, and reactionary films are frequently terrible. Watch a better made, more entertaining conservative film like No Country for Old Men, Last of the Mohicans (1992) or even The Phantom Menace instead. 

Notes: 

Robert Rodat wrote 17 drafts of the script "before there was an acceptable one." In an earlier version, "Anne is pregnant with Gabriel's child when she dies in the burning church." 

The historical figure Tavington is based on was named Banastre Tarleton. That's such a better name I'm sure what Rodat and Emmerich/Devlin regretted most was that they couldn't use it. The worst war crime Tarleton was accused of was having American soldiers who were trying to surrender shot but Nathan Bedford Forrest was accused of the same thing and there are statues of him in the South. 

Usually an actor includes a middle initial because there's already someone with his name in the guild. Was there another Kirk Petruccelli? Did he follow his father into the business? If so, why not Kirk Petruccelli, Jr.? Or is it like George W. Bush? 

Harrison Ford "declined the lead role, feeling the script had boiled the Revolutionary War down to a 'one-man's-revenge' melodrama." Harrison Ford was right (and he knows "one man's revenge" stories).

Fun with screen captures: