Talk:The Patriot (2000 film)

Unfortunate

" There he was, unfortunately for his legacy, a fierce defender of the African slave trade upon which his family fortune was based." Odd wording. I'd suggest removing "unfortunately for his legacy." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.142.39.50 (talk) 09:27, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

What about the parts that were accurate?

The film attracted controversy, with competing claims made about its merits given its historical inaccuracies. Professor Mark Glancy, teacher of film history at Queen Mary University of London has said: "It's horrendously inaccurate and attributes crimes committed by the Nazis in the 1940s to the British in the 1770s."[2] In contrast, Australian film critic David Edwards asserts that "this fictional story is set around actual events, but it is not a history of what America was, or even an image of what it has become—it's a dream of what it should be....The Patriot is a grand epic full of action and emotion....But it's also surprisingly insightful in its evaluation of the American ideal—if not the reality."[3]

I have a problem with this. First of all, the person criticizing the inaccuracies appears to be ignorant of the fact that the action in the movie takes place in the 1780s, not the 1770s. It is quite bizarre to criticize inaccuracies while committing them yourself.

But more importantly, it falsely implies that the movie is complete fantasy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The storyline is obviously heavily fictionalized (as most historical movies are) but general events were mostly accurate. The British really did take over South Carolina in 1780, there really was partisan resistance, a British victory at Camden, and a Patriot victory at Cowpens. Tarleton did indeed attract controversy, and Cornwallis and Tarleton often feuded.

Honestly, when I first read scholarly accounts of the Revolutionary War I was more amazed at what they got right than what they got wrong. There needs to be a distinction made between the obviously bogus aspects of the movie and the events that were factually portrayed.

CJK (talk) 03:48, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Right, probably many thing were accurate. But the fighting is totally wrong, which just proves that the script writers had no clues whatsoever how wars have been fought back in those days. Therefore a citation from [1]:

In a letter to his cousin Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange in December 8, 1594 he said: "I have discovered evolutionibus [a term that would eventually be translated as "drill"] a method of getting the musketeers and others with guns not only to practice firing but to keep on doing so in a very effective battle order (that is to say, they do not fire at will or from behind a barrier....). Just as soon as the first rank has fired, then by the drill [they have learned] they will march to the back. The second rank either marching forward or standing still, will then fire just like the first. After that the third and following ranks will do the same. When the last rank has fired, the first will have reloaded, as the following diagram shows: [...]"

After all, it seems that "going muscle on muscle" was not so unclever with those oldish guns, because it created a constant "wall of bullets" towards the enemy. But what the Americans did e.g. at Cowpens, was an even more creative strategy, by running towards the British troops, shooting one volley (by having the front rank kneel: [2]), and running away again to reload. Then showing up again - sometimes from another angle - aso. This only worked because of the terrain, but it was the perfect strategy against the British "bullet wall". And unfortunately this all has been totally screwed up in the movie. The final fight is just dumb, boring and totally inaccurate. And why does the word "guerilla" never show up in the movie? Looks like censorship to me, because it would be admitting that the US military lost in Vietnam in exactly the same manner as the British lost in the USA more than 2 centuries ago. --178.197.228.81 (talk) 22:17, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

This discussion has wandered off topic. This page is for discussing improvements to the article, not for general discussion of the film. To add any discussion to the article, we need independent reliable sources directly discussing the film. - SummerPhD (talk) 00:33, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

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