The second movie to be reviewed for the July 8th weekend is "The Patriot". I'm reviewing it now because the other journal entries are for what happened during my trip to Memphis. "The Patriot" is an American Revolutionary War movie which stars Australian-born actors Mel Gibson and Heath Ledger. I don't care about that fact, but I remember reading it. Certainly evens the balance since American actors play foreign characters all of the time.

"The Patriot" starts in 1776, just before the American colonies declare their independence from Britain. Benjamin Martin (Gibson), a former Captain in the militia of South Carolina, has argued against going to war. He is a single parent of 7 children and warns that war will bring hardships and death to civilians as well as the soldiers. But the vote goes against him and South Carolina joins the American cause.

At this point let me point out that movies reflect the current attitudes and culture of America, and more specifically a generally more liberal view than what is normal for America. So in this movie, Benjamin Martin lives in the South and has blacks working on his fields. But it also reflects today's values in that these blacks are freedmen working for Martin because they want to. There is also a "white racist" vs black slave plot, wherein the white man eventually learns to think of the black man as a fellow freedomfighter and human being. These kinds of things are sort of expected, even in period pieces, so it didn't really bother me, but I did note it.

Back to the movie. Gabriel Martin (Ledger) is an ardent revolutionary and joins the Continental Army over his father's wishes. Skip a few months as we find Martin and family going about their business on their fields. Nearby a battle rages into the night and Gabriel stumbles in, wounded, as minutes later we see the Colonials retreating from the British troops.

The next morning we find Martin and his family giving aid to the wounded of both sides. A British infantry Captain thanks Martin for aiding the King's soldiers. But in rides the main bad guy, Colonel William Tavington (Jason Isaacs) who orders the Colonial wounded to be killed and Gabriel to be hanged as a spy. In the ensuing negotiations the second oldest son is shot and killed by Tavington, which sets off Martin into eventually joining the Revolution.

There is a lot more to the movie, indeed it's over 2-1/2 hours long. Lots of rather graphic violence, acts of cruelty and barbarism, romances both happy and tragic, and a climatic battle between one of the Colonial armies and an army led by General Cornwallis (Tom Wilkinson). The damage that canonballs can do is particularly graphic.

Notable actors in the movie are TchŽky Karyo as Jean Villeneuve, a French soldier from the 7th Light Infantry in America to train the Colonials; this guy looks and acts a bit like GŽrard Depardieu and I totally mistook him until I read the credits. Rene Auberjonois plays Reverend Oliver, who joins the militia to protect his flock (the other villagers who joined); Rene looks good in this movie for a guy over 60. Adam Baldwin plays Captain Wilkins, a Tory under the command of Col. Tavington. So that's what he looks like, totally different from the other Baldwin brothers. Peter Woodward (Galen from the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade) played Brigadier General O'Hara, which doesn't sound right since it looked like he was more of an aide to General Cornwallis.

My recommendation is that "The Patriot" is well worth watching. I did not find myself either looking at my watch or thinking that a particular scene sucked. It's a grand epic and certainly deserves to be one of the top movies of this summer.