(Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures. No, they didn’t personally allow me to use it, but I don’t want to be accused of copyright infringement).
Not a whole lot of movies scream “MURICA, FUCK YEAH” as clearly or as loudly as The Patriot.
The only thing that would’ve made it more “MURICA” is if Mel Gibson charged the redcoats in an F-150 and blasted “Bawitdaba” through the speakers while sporting a pair of aviators and a Martin Riggs-esque mullet.
That might have been more historically accurate than what was actually portrayed in the movie.
And it would’ve been AWESOME.
I remember when The Patriot hit the big screen back in 2000, and I was so excited because there weren’t a lot of American Revolution films at the time (not that I knew of, anyway).
Of course, my parents refused to let me see it because it was rated “R.” 😒
What’s so American about the MPAA rating system, anyway? What a bunch of commie drivel.
Fortunately, when it came out on VHS (woo, now that’s history right there), Pops waited until Mom went to bed before he let me watch it.
Yes, the MPAA rating system is ridiculous, but there’s no denying that The Patriot earned that “R.”
Blown-off limbs, one blown-off noggin, one scene where Mel Gibson goes to town with a hatchet on a British soldier (I mean GOES TO TOWN. I didn’t think the human body had that much blood), this flick’s got enough violence to make any red-blooded American nod with approval and mutter “Awww hell yeah.”
Yeah, yeah, it’s not “historically accurate,” but neither was Braveheart, right?
For one thing, I seriously doubt that any British officer would ever consider locking a village’s citizens inside a church and setting it ablaze (if you know of any similar incident perpetrated by the redcoats during this time, please enlighten me).
Also, there sure seemed to be a lot of African Americans who weren’t slaves (one even went out of his way to tell the British antagonist, “Were not slaves, we work this land, free men.”).
We get it. Not all African Americans were slaves, but enough of them were to make the movie seem like it was just pretending slavery wasn’t THAT big a deal in the late 1700s (it was).
Still, The Patriot is wildly entertaining. The good guys are good and the bad guys are BAD (Jason Isaacs’s Colonel Tavington is pretty much if the Terminator went back to the American Revolution as a Brit, but with a little more emotion).
The action is violent, the cinematography is outstanding, and there’s just enough humor at the French’s expense to make us long for the short-lived day’s of “Freedom Fries.”
Plus it’s got Mel Gibson, before the drunken anti-Semitic rants and abusive behavior towards women.
And MURICA wins at the end. 😉🇺🇸
yonkaholic 