Throughout Hollywood's history, choosing the American Revolution as subject matter has almost always been regarded as a losing business proposition, and that's not likely to change. Blame it on the expense of attaining historical accuracy, or the lack of immediacy to the movie-going public; neither factor is going to decrease with the continuing passage of the years. By the late 1990s, the director/producer team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, having established their box-office clout with the immensely profitable sci-fi hit Independence Day (1996), were confident they had a Revolutionary War project that would buck the trend. Mounted as a blockbuster for the summer 2000 season, $25 million of its estimated $110 budget went to land a very-much-at-his-peak Mel Gibson in the lead. As it wound up, the domestic earnings of The Patriot (2000) came in at just some $3 million over the break-even point, and while audience and critical response was generally favorable, it's a safe assumption going forward that few scripts with redcoats will be greenlighted.

The filmmakers' original intent was to present a straight-up biography of Francis Marion (1732-1795), the South Carolina militiaman whose utilization of guerrilla tactics earned him the sobriquet of "The Swamp Fox" from the flustered British military brain trust. (Marion was, in fact, portrayed by Leslie Nielsen in a Disney "Swamp Fox" TV series in the late '50s-early '60s). When research brought more controversial aspects of Marion's life and career to light, however, the screenplay by Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan, 1998) opted to make the central character an amalgam of Marion and other period figures.

The Patriot opens in 1776 on the South Carolina plantation spread of Benjamin Martin (Gibson), a young widower whose battle exploits in the French and Indian Wars have become a local legend. However, Martin has had his fill of conflict, and his all-encompassing focus is now the family of seven children that he's raising alone. While his eldest, Gabriel (Heath Ledger), is very much caught up in the Colonials' cause, Benjamin is avowedly neutral regarding the skirmishes erupting around him, offering succor to wounded soldiers on both sides.

Of course, fate will pull Martin off the fence, and it comes in the form of the irretrievably heinous Colonel William Tavington (Jason Isaacs), a callous exponent of might-makes-right who views Benjamin's granting relief to the revolutionaries as treason. Beyond burning the Martin homestead to the ground, he drags Gabriel away for hanging because of his political sentiments, and murders another of Benjamin's sons for sheer sport.

Tavington's actions only cause the British forces to reap the whirlwind, as the vengeance-maddened Martin arms two of his younger sons to assist in Gabriel's rescue, an act accomplished by the tomahawk-wielding former gentleman farmer with stunning brutality. Wholly devoted to the revolutionary cause, Benjamin's cut-and-run assaults on the Brits have them deeming him "The Ghost." While General Cornwallis (Tom Wilkinson) holds personal disdain for Tavington's cold-bloodedness, the mounting embarrassments at Martin's hands leave him no choice but to grant him carte blanche in dealing with the rebel, and the path to a final confrontation is assured.

The Patriot certainly had enough resonance with audiences to be a significant career step for two of its principals. Ledger showed a confident and credible on-screen rapport with Gibson, and the role was great exposure for the rising young Australian actor. Isaacs' high villainy landed him on the "Love to Hate" A-list, notably as the imperious Lucius Malfoy in the latter entries in the Harry Potter series. Several moments in the script that would have served to humanize Tavington somewhat wound up on the cutting room floor, for the purpose of ensuring that he would be swiftly established as the heavy. Tavington would be the flashpoint for the largely negative response The Patriot received in the British media, with the sequence in which the officer orders the torching of a church with its parishioners locked inside drawing particular ire.

The filmmakers did strive for historical detail, and Devlin confessed to Smithsonian magazine that the period project offered different demands than the sci-fi stories with which he and Emmerich had been associated. "It was a different discipline, a different level. Thanks to the Smithsonian, we were able to get a lot of things into the picture that weren't in the script when we first read it. I wasn't aware that the American Revolution was fought with a racially integrated army, and that it was the last time we had one until the Korean War." At Oscar® time, The Patriot received a total of three nominations, including Best Cinematography (Caleb Deschanel), Best Original Music Score (John Williams) and Best Sound (Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell and Lee Orloff.)

Producer: Dean Devlin, Mark Gordon, Gary Levinsohn, Roland Emmerich, Ute Emmerich, William Fay
Director: Roland Emmerich
Screenplay: Robert Rodat
Cinematography: Caleb Deschanel
Film Editing: David Brenner, Julie Monroe
Art Direction: Barry Chusid
Music: John Williams
Cast: Mel Gibson (Benjamin Martin), Heath Ledger (Gabriel Martin), Joely Richardson (Charlotte Selton), Jason Isaacs (Col. William Tavington), Chris Cooper (Col. Harry Burwell), Tcheky Karyo (Jean Villeneuve).
C-165m. Letterboxed.

by Jay S. Steinberg