Review of Patriot, The - Extended Cut

Introduction

German-born film-maker Roland Emmerich clearly has something of a hard-on for America. `Independence Day` was the most feverent example of jingoistic film-making ever committed to celluloid, feeling like it was designed from the ground up to have US movie-goers spewing out of the multiplexes a rootin` and a hollerin` over the July opening weekend. Then he made `The Patriot`, a historical epic set in the British colonies during the Revolutionary War of the 18th century; a film which out flag-waves everything that`s ever come before it.

A period piece with a Western sensibility, Mel Gibson plays Benjamin Martin, a farmer reluctantly caught up in the American War of Independence which took place from 1775 to 1783, the focus of which was the English colonies` attempt at self-governance and freedom from the British throne, a war which sprung from the ashes of the well-documented American Revolution. Widower Martin is a decorated war hero after cloudy events during the French-Indian War, but has settled down to the life of a farmer, content on bringing up his seven-strong brood. That is until his home colony of South Carolina, against his own vote, declares its intent to revolt. This brings King George`s large army of Redcoats to North American shores, and the death of his young son at the hands of a Redcoat colonel results in Martin and his eldest son Gabriel (Heath Ledger) entering the war on the side of the Continentals. They band together a militia, a rag-tag army of untrained fighters, and head off to battle on behalf of what would become the United States of America.

Video

The Blu-ray version of `The Patriot` is, for the most part, impressive for a catalogue title. An anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer, it`s much clearer than you might expect, although the quality certainly varies from scene to scene. The first 20-minutes look fantastic, sharp and detailed with good depth; the scene where Gibson tries to repair a rocking chair in his outbuilding looks superb, the warm, autumnal lighting casting a rich glow across the screen. Blacks are thick, free from blemishing, and the colour palette is bright without being garish. But as you venture further into the film, you start to pick out faults. Grain is present, variable in its intensity, but bright block colouring comes off worst. In one scene, what is intended to be a bright dawn sky looked muddy and flecked. The landscape palette takes a little hit at depth, with colours seeming washed out a little and not quite as vivid as they are during other, more focused shots.

But what`s always apparent is the clarity. Objects look distinct, close-ups revealing how fresh the transfer comes across. There are points when you`d be hard-pressed to tell the difference as to whether you`re watching a great SD transfer or HD, but these are relatively few and far between (although the British supply ship exploding after rebel sabotage looked particularly blurry). Digital correction seems to have been kept to a minimum, with no eroding of its cinematic hues, but there is a flaw present in the transfer that could have done with a little computerised bleaching; about 30 minutes into the film, there`s a thin vertical black line that appears on the right-hand side of the frame, and sticks around for about 5 seconds.

* Viewed on a 32" 1366 x 768 panel at 720p

* The screenshots featured here are for illustrative purposes only. They were not taken from the Blu-ray source, and as such, the images are not representative of the quality of the disc.

Audio

Uncompressed PCM 5.1 is the master-quality audio on the disc, but I won`t be reviewing that due to technical limitations. The English Dolby Digital 5.1 track is rollicking. Lots of whooping and banging, popping and fizzling as it makes good use of the soundstage. Solid directional implementation and flawless travelling from speaker to speaker with the flow of the action and the bleeding of James Horner`s forgettably twee score . It`s got a solid, if unremarkable low frequency, although this does lend itself to unoppressive spot effects which is a bit of an advantage; there`s nothing worse than someone opening a drawer of cutlery and having all 5.1 go off like an explosion of glass and metal. The effects still have a good crunch to them, but you`re unlikely to crap yourself at their ferocity (unlike, off the top of my head, when the gravedigger swings his axe at the beginning of `Kingdom of Heaven` in DTS).

Also on the disc is the Dolby Digital 5.1 dubbed into French and Czech, and a voice-over read in Polish 5.1. The vast list of European subtitles that can be found on most Sony discs is present here, too.

Features

Just two short featurettes, each running about 10-minutes. `Art of War` feels like a snippet from a longer EPK piece, where those involved discuss the battlefield tactics of the era in particularly poor SD quality, and `True Patriots` recounts the work that went into creating the `historical accuracy` of the film, with contributions from various - presumably on-set - experts.

Conclusion

It doesn`t matter whether he`s acting, directing, scripting or simply putting on a show for his local church fete, Mel Gibson and historical accuracy come together like oil and water. So it`s no surprise to find `The Patriot` isn`t pure fiction, nor does it adhere strictly to fact, instead twisting one into another. The result is an oversentimental, ultrapatriotic jumble of uninteresting set-pieces jammed into a fairly sluggish story filled to the jugular with a cast of players void of decent characterisation. Roland Emmerich knows how to put together a big, loud and pompy blockbuster, and in that regard, `The Patriot` fits the bill - sort of. But its (loose) ties to historical events don`t make the film any more cerebral than `Godzilla`. It`s pure epos by numbers stuff, lacking the pop and fizzle of pretty much any of its contemporaries that fit into the category. And if Gibson, stars and stripes in hand, charging at the Redcoats in slo-mo doesn`t have you looking to strangle the nearest Yank, it`ll certainly have you scrambling for the sick bucket.

The liberties taken by Gibson when he strung together the plot for `Braveheart` look faint when compared to `The Patriot`. The biggest being the British army circa the seventeen-hundreds acting like forerunners to Himmler`s Nazi Paramilitary, spearheaded by a cruel and inhuman Redcoat colonel played by Jason Isaacs. Isaacs gobbles up the quaint colonial sets as he plays the stereotypical British baddie, transposed out of the realm of fancy and into faux-history, missing only a set of SS all-blacks to complete the image. Emmerich fails to build any momentum gained from the gentlemanly battles of musket and drum, each acting as a catalyst for pondering and reflection on the illogicality of rebels to-ing and fro-ing around the landscape as they please while a superior force invades their lands. The British officers, upper-class twits poncing about in their tents, present no real sense of threat and the whole film has a torpid flow and abundance of wasted potential. There`s content wallowing around in there somewhere - the Revolutionary War serves as an interesting and important piece of world history - but it just never pulls its socks up and gives us the side we`d like to see, and the `family thrust into the throes of war angle` peters out before it even gets going.

Opening just two months after Ridley Scott`s swords and sandals revival `Gladiator`, comparisons based on their period settings just prove to take even more wind out of the sails of Emmerich`s piece. Where `Gladiator` had grit, excitement and palpable melancholy , `The Patriot` has borderline psychosis, losing touch with the reality of what makes a roadshow-type film a spectacle. What it is not is a pop-flick dressed up in important clothing.