Hi BT, I like The Patriot too, actually, at least in terms of pure entertainment. Great actions scenes, especially the one where Mel and his little tikes snipe those British soldiers on the road away from his farm. I would, in fact, classify that as one of the most thrilling military scenes in any movie ever. But, like the rest of the film, it requires a huge suspension of disbelief. That scene, fun as it is to watch, would-not-could-not happen with muskets. Or how about the Heath Ledger character's girlfriend's impassioned speech telling the men in church they should sack up and fight the British? Beside the fact that a woman lecturing men in public in that way absolutely would not have been tolerated in the mid-18th century, it's also a laughably asinine speech.

It's not just these inaccuracies, but the transparent ethos behind them, that I find so infuriating.  My biggest problem with this film is the way that historical nuance is dispensed in favor of banal good-vs-evil platitudes that are more appropriate for Harry Potter. The British are just evil, period, because they're fighting against the colonists. Mel's character has black sharecroppers who work of their own free accord, but not as slaves; God forbid we depict that with an ounce of realism (of course, Francis Marion, on whom Benjamin Martin was based, was in reality a slaveholder and serial rapist). It's a huge whitewash of history.

And that's why I invoked this film in my conversation with Dee, since she apparently believes that in order to have value, a military-oriented film has to portray Americans as infallibly good and the enemy as evil, brutal, unredeemable, slimy, etc. And The Patriot is a prime example of this, as embodied by the Christ-like Gibson character (does he ever not play a Christ-like character?) and the eeeeeevil Tavington. Who cares about the history and reality of the Revolution when you can have a tete-a-tete rivalry that resembles a pro wrestling feud?

Some of the many, many historical inaccuracies in The Patriot.

So, my point here; why is it so much better when a film engages in pathos-laden sentimentality, even at the expense of historical realism, in the service of patriotic boosterism, than when a film depicts the American military as fallible or prone to moral crisis?

Il y a la merde quel remort produit quand il a mange trop stupidite.

White hetero males need not apply for heroic roles.

But the white hetero male is the archetypal hero. The first film I can think of that changes this is Terminator 2 (which does still have Schwarzenegger kicking ass and taking names) where the woman becomes the heroic figure. If filmmakers are tired of having the predictable figure of the violently heroic white hetero male, and instead want to explore how identity politics come into the mix, I see nothing wrong with that. Some will be good (as I've said, I thought GI Jane was pretty good, and encourage you to give it a chance) and others will be cloying and abysmal (Men of Honor, for instance, in my opinion).

As a white hetero male, I don't see this as a disturbing trend. If a suitably compelling white hetero male comes to the attention of producers, I'm certain they would still make a film about him. Never underestimate the American moviegoer's love of James Bond-type heroes.

Il y a la merde quel remort produit quand il a mange trop stupidite.