It reminded me of "The Outlaw Josey Wales" you know the one, nice peace loving farmer turns killer when the evil Yankee Red Legs kill his family and then he butchers them all in revenge, yawn, yawn. Personally, I like movies as pure entertainment, I don't see their role as being teachers of history, at best they over-simplify it, and at worst, they re-write it. In Germany for example, they recognized early on the dangers of re-writing their own tarnished past and passed laws to prevent it.
Anyone who falls for this kind of "cheer the guy in white and boo the guy in black" stuff is obviously enjoying what they see. But, and it's a big but, Braveheart resulted in several violent racist assaults on English people by young Scots who were heard (or should that be herd) to shout "Freedom" as they carried out the attack, the famous line from the movie. I have also seen some less than savory anti-British posts here when a newspaper report was quoted saying that the Brits were offended by the film, I doubt that very much, the Brits could care less, they watched Braveheart in their hundreds of thousands and I doubt there will be any difference with The Patriot.
Bottom line, chewing gum for the eyes, nowhere near as good as Gladiator. I just hope it doesn't have any effect on the attitudes of the more impressionable.
Mike H
