The movie, The Patriot, directed by Roland Emmerich was “…the best film ever made about the Revolutionary War.” ummmm NOT!!! This movie was very unrealistic about the American Revolution and was “conventionally written and conventionally directed for a conventional audience.”

Not saying this movie was horrible and that I didn’t enjoy watching it, but how this movie represented the American Revolution was just awful! Although the cinematography was great. The battle scenes really came alive with sounds of gunfire, cannon, and shouted orders.

The central problem with The Patriot was that the movie was going around in circles. It never really focused on a main idea. There were a lot of small stories within this whole main idea of the American Revolution. There is the story of the war itself, the story of a family torn apart by the war, the story of a man wrestling with his past and his faith, and not one but two love stories. It never provided an actual humanistic approach to the plot. There was a lot of usages of tired clichés which only to weakened the narrative.

Even though we all knew the British were the “bad guys”, the depiction of the Brits were very unflattering. Everything the British did in the movie seemed so evil….they were poorly portrayed. The part when we see British soldiers lock the population of a town in a church and burn it does absolutely nothing for the movie other than make the villains seem deliberately cruel.

My favorite part about watching The Patriot however, was getting to see the deleted scenes. Seven scenes are presented, which can be watched with or without commentary by Devlin and Emmerich. This section was also frustrating because it showed that some of the best, most emotional scenes in the movie were cut out due to concerns about the running time. There is one scene in particular where Benjamin Martin holds a makeshift family funeral for his son Thomas. Mel Gibson’s acting in this scene, his depiction of Martin’s struggle with his own faith and his guilt over his past, are so powerful and honest that this scene would have added a lot to the movie. The funeral scene only runs for about a minute, and in my mind it was a huge mistake to cut it from the final version of the picture.

This movie actually opened on the weekend of 4th of July which is kind of ironic because it doesn’t really depict the American Revolution anyways. This was just an average action flick in which Hollywood came along and twisted the story and left out really important parts to the movie because they were worried about the running time. I was kind of disappointed though because this was a period in our history which changed America, and they should have deserved a much better examination.

[1] http://imdb.com/title/tt0187393/

[2] http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1800353825/info

[3] http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Pavillion/3630/

After compiling information for the spreadsheet, I could see an ongoing pattern for what they wore or took when these slaves/servants escaped. Dating from September 17, 1736, Thomas Rennolds was able to take not only himself while he was running away, but a few other items such as “several Shoe makers Tools, Canvas Wastcoats and Breeches, and wore a Brown Duroy Coat, lin’d with Blue Shalloon, one Black, and one White Wigg, and, ’tis suppos’d, he also took with him a small Bay Horse, branded with a Horse-shoe, on the near Buttock” Just from reading this ad, this runaway servant planned well, and took with him things which aided him to run away. He took a horse so that during the escape he wouldn’t have to travel on foot and he also took another set of clothing so that if somebody ever wrote an ad searching for him he could change, and maybe he thought that if he was lucky and he really escaped without being captured again that he could maybe start a new life. According to my spreadsheet, a common theme that kept repeating was that these slaves/servants who escaped would most of the time escaped and didn’t travel on foot, meaning they probably stole a horse. But I only see this trend continue throughout the 1730’s, and early 1740’s. What I did see that continued even throughout the 1800’s was that the runaways would still take a lot of clothing with them as you can read from this quote in an ad which dates Febrary 15, 1803. “…robbed my house of 7 Tea spoons, 6 of them marked F. M. 2 Table Spoons, a pair of Sugar Tongs, also marked as above, a pair of large Silver Shoe Buckles, a gold Broach, Barcelona Handkerchief, small diaper Table Cloth, brown Jacket and a Sword…” Besides the clothing though, you can clearly see that this escapee took a lot more than just extra clothing. Over time, runaways took more than needed besides clothing, maybe because later on in the time period, they could pass off as a free servant if they managed to escape/runaway.