The Patriot Movie Review

When the Charleston Assembly votes to join the rebellion, a friend from Benjamin's past, Col. Burwell, tries to recruit him to join the Continental Army. After all, Burwell says, everyone still remembers Benjamin's exploits at Fort Wilderness during that war. But Benjamin wants nothing to do with the looming hostilities. "I have seven children," he says. "My wife is dead. Who's to care for them if I go to war?" But his eldest son, Gabriel, has no such qualms; he defies his father's will and joins the army. You know it's only a matter of time before Benjamin, too, is drawn into the fighting—in this case, courtesy of the cruel British cavalry leader, Col. Tavington.

Positive Elements: The colonists often show true selflessness, joining to
Oliver joins the militia saying, "I'm a shepherd, and someone needs to fend off the wolves." A church is burned down, and amid the smoke and rubble the camera focuses on the cross still standing high above the damage. Frequent quick prayers are said before battle.

Benjamin truly seems vexed by his past. "I have long feared that my sins will come to visit me and that the costs will be more than I can bear," he says at the beginning of the movie, as he's seen packing away his instruments of war. Later in the movie, he says, "Not a day goes by that I don't ask God's forgiveness for what I've done." On a mystical note, two of the younger Martin children point to the North Star and comment that it is their dead mother. "She looks down and protects us forever," one says.

Sexual Content: Ambiguous at best. Gabriel openly courts Anne Howard with her father's permission. When Anne's father frets about the attention the handsome young Gabriel is showing his daughter, her mother makes a remark about how he was worse in his youth, implying that they'd had premarital sex. To the movie's credit, Anne and Gabriel are married in an explicitly Christian ceremony. The widower Benjamin relies on his sister-in-law, Charlotte, to hide his family, but it is implied that they have sex, as she is seen later in the movie carrying a
A few stand out, however. [Warning: plot point revealed] After ambushing a British patrol that has just killed his son, Benjamin runs down the last soldier, who is trying to flee, and kills him with a metal tomahawk, hacking at the body repeatedly in his fury for revenge. He also kills a soldier by flinging the tomahawk into his forehead. A soldier has his head blown off by a cannon ball, and another his leg. A fair amount of gore with wounded having limbs amputated. Several scenes of both British and Americans killing soldiers who are trying to surrender. Civilians are rounded up and locked in a church, which is burned down with them inside. A member of the militia, after returning home to find his wife and son murdered, puts a gun to his head and pulls the