The Patriot

The Patriot is a 2000 American epic historical war film that is written by Robert Rodat, directed by Roland Emmerich, and starring Mel Gibson, Chris Cooper, Heath Ledger and Jason Isaacs. The story takes place mainly in rural Berkeley County, South Carolina, and depicts Benjamin Martin (Gibson), an American colonist opposed to going to war with Great Britain but, along with his adult son (Ledger), gets swept into the American Revolutionary War when his home life is disrupted, and one of his sons is murdered by a cruel British officer (Isaacs). Rodat has said Martin is a composite character based on four historical men: Andrew Pickens, Francis Marion, Daniel Morgan and Thomas Sumter. Most of the film's events occur in the Southern theater of the war. Despite receiving generally-positive reviews from critics, it was harshly criticized by British critics and historians and stirred controversy in the United Kingdom because of its themes of anti-British sentiment, its fictionalized portrayal of British figures and atrocities including killing wounded soldiers and prisoners of war; the film has its main villain shoot a child in cold blood and has a fictional scene in which a parish church that is filled with colonists is locked and burned. In his review of the film, the critic Roger Ebert wrote, "None of it has much to do with the historical reality of the Revolutionary War". Plot During the American Revolutionary War in 1776, Captain Benjamin Martin, a French and Indian War veteran and a widower with seven children, is called to Charlestown to vote in the South Carolina General Assembly on a levy supporting the Continental Army. Fearing war against Great Britain and not wanting to force others to fight when he will not do so, Benjamin abstains, but the vote passes, and Benjamin's oldest son, Gabriel, joins the army against his father's wishes.