Reviewing Movies

The online cost of this movie on DVD finally reached my comfort level so I watched it this week at home at my leisure. It’s remarkable how much I missed upon watching the rental copy or have forgotten since. What stuck me initially this time round is how much Mel Gibson has succumbed to middle-age spread. Heath Ledger, who plays his onscreen son, looks more like the lithe lad who played the early Mad Max movies. The American Revolutionary War which forms the backdrop for this piece was a historical event and the technical people were at pains to keep the costuming, weaponry, and other details in period. Although historical battles and generals are portrayed the character, Benjamin Martin and his family and friends are fictitious. In many ways this movie seems to be a re-hashing of the events of Braveheart with the exception that here his sons die and he manages to survive. And yes, here the British lose; though it was the intervention of the French Fleet that sealed their fate.

The parallels between these two War Dramas are uncanny. Mel Gibson’s character is the reluctant leader of an underdog group of rebels. He is driven to come out of his self-imposed seclusion by the murder of a family member by a cruel overlord who bedevils him throughout. A rabble band of loyal followers undertake a guerilla campaign against the enemy though here the swamps of Carolina stand in for the high fells of Scotland. Both stories end in a pitched battle the difference here being that the rebels won this one. Being a Canadian and a member of the British Commonwealth I can not say that the good guys won this one—but then Gibson is an Australian by birth, not an American. It is made plain that the seeds of the next major American Conflagration 90 years later were sown here. Somehow Gibson has failed to re-fight the American Civil War.

Although Gibson gets the star billing here in many ways this is Heath Ledger’s movie. But then Gibson didn’t direct this movie. Mel is ever the smart aleck and no more so than in the scenes with Cornwallis’ Great Danes who seem to prefer Gibson’s company to that of their owner. The idea of two opposing armies standing in straight lines and firing hand-loaded rifles at one another until one line or the other broke and ran seems strange in an error when one bomb dropped from 5 miles in the air can destroy an entire city and everyone in it; though no less barbaric. That there should be gentlemen’s agreements about how the affair be conducted is even more quaint. The cost in human carnage and civilian casualties is no less horrendous.

One final parallel can be drawn. One charismatic individual can make all the difference if he can find men who will follow him and remain loyal.