The Patriot
“Truth is the first casualty in Hollywood’s war,” read the headline of the London Telegraph‘s take on The Patriot. Principal among the movie’s gross inaccuracies is the portrayal of British soldiers as evil, bloodthirsty sadists. In one scene, redcoats are seen rounding up a village of screaming women, children and old men, locking them in a church and setting the building ablaze. No such thing ever happened in the Revolutionary War. What’s worse? An almost identical crime — one of World War II’s most notorious atrocities — was carried out by Nazi soldiers in France in 1944. Meaning not only did the film paint a portrait of the British as cruel killers, it compared them to history’s worst: the Nazis. As Stephen Hunter, a film critic and historian told the Telegraph, “Any image of the American Revolution which represents you Brits as Nazis and us as gentle folk is almost certainly wrong.”
Another of the film’s egregious oversights lies with lead character Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson), based on several real-life players in the American Revolution, including Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion, a militia leader from South Carolina. The movie depicts Martin as a family man and hero who single-handedly defeats countless hostile Brits. According to the Guardian, however, evidence suggests the Swamp Fox was a man who actively persecuted Cherokee Indians (killing them for fun) and regularly raped his female slaves. In fact, The Patriot turns a blind eye to slavery altogether, a decision that received much attention from critics including director Spike Lee. “For three hours The Patriot dodged around, skirted about or completely ignored slavery,” Lee wrote in a letter to the Hollywood Reporter. “The Patriot is pure, blatant American Hollywood propaganda. A complete whitewashing of history.”
