Directed by Roland Emmerich
Written by Robert Rodat
Starring:
– Mel Gibson as Benjamin Martin
– Heath Ledger as Gabriel Martin
– Joely Richardson as Charlotte Selton
– Jason Isaacs as William Tavington
You did what now?
Please, don’t do this to me.
Oh come off it. Seriously, what did you do?
Do I have to admit this?
I think we both know the answer to that.
Jesus man… OK, but this stays between you and me; I watched The Patriot.
Give me a second.
What?
Just hang on.
OK.
Ready?
I believe I am.
BWAAH HAA HAAAA! HEEHAH HEEHAHHH BWAA HAAH HAA!!
Why are you doing this?
Because [wheeze], because [pause–drawing breath] it’s so God damned STOOPID!
Man, look. I was flipping channels and I got sucked in and…
BWAAH HAA HAAAA! HEEHAH HEEHAHHH BWAA HAAH HAA!!
Stop making that noise.
I can’t. BWAAH HAA HAAAA! HEEHAH HEEHAHHH BWAA HAAH HAA!!
I hate you.
OK, OK… Um… So, what did you think? (tee-hee)
Can I go, please?
You have nothing at all to say? You?
What do you want me to say? It was a lame, maudlin film.
Keep going.
Sigh… can I just skip to the end?
I don’t see why not.
Thank you. Mel Gibson all by his lonesome turns the tide of the war
by not only coming up with an ingenious battle plan, but when all hope
is lost he picks up Old Glory and defies the retreat order, convincing
his rag-tag militia men to fight on. He actually stands on top of a
burned out something or other and waves the flag in the heat of battle.
Aren’t you forgetting something?
Oh yeah, it’s his dead son’s flag. His son got killed by the bad guy
and Gibson was going to stop fighting and go hang out with his family
on a slave plantation. But, after burying his son, he sees the flag and
rides into battle to defeat the hated Brits.
Does he kill the bad guy?
Duh. But, not before we get treated to a long, drawn-out slo-mo
fight where the bad guy is clearly the superior soldier and slashes
both of Gibson’s arms, his leg and his back twice. When he is just
about to be beheaded, Gibson sees the flag–now in the hands of another
patriot–and ducks, spins and stabs the bad guy in the guts. Then he
runs a bayonet through the bad guy’s neck. Then he marches on and
defeats General Cornwallis and the rest of the British army. He has two
or three other people around him, some French guy and Chris Cooper, but
this is essentially a personal war between Gibson and England.
When Gibson got all slashed up, was he enjoying it?
Dude, it was totally the “please don’t use those whips and chains over there on the wall to torture me” moment from South Park. Gratuitous masochism at it’s finest.
Boy that sounds awful.
I didn’t even mention the black soldier yet.
There was a black soldier? In the Revolutionary War?
I’m sure there probably is a historical corollary, but this is essential the exact same shit we saw in Pearl Harbor and Volcano;
at first the white guys don’t like the black guy but then they learn to
really, really respect him. He still can’t fuck their daughters for a
couple hundred years, but, like, you know.
Do you having anything good to say?
At the end, the credits rolled.
Come on.
Sigh… man… OK, Gibson was pretty good. He was his goofy self.
But like… I don’t know. The story was so base and vile… He screwed
his dead wife’s sister. That was pretty hot. And Biblical.
Of course. Anything else?
I was sitting in a Taco Bell drive-through today (my co-worker was
getting that slop, not me–and yes… that sort of makes me special
even though she is totally slim) and there was a huge Arco station
filled with monstrous SUVs, men without shirts, fat children, diabetes
everywhere–and it just dawned on me that maybe we would have been
better off staying British. At least I’d have the fucking dole.