9) The Patriot
I can’t really be surprised that The Patriot contains some stretching of the truth, given the “dream team” that worked on it. Namely, Roland Emmerich directed and Mel Gibson starred in this Revolutionary War epic, which sees fit to base its hero, Benjamin Martin, on a horrifically cruel militia leader by the name of Francis Marion.
Marion was not as skillful a soldier as The Patriot‘s Martin, who’s seen taking out dozens of villainous Redcoats by himself. Instead, Marion was known as a slave-holding sicko who raped his female slaves repeatedly and hunted Cherokee Indians for fun. You know, your classic Revolutionary War hero. Unfortunately, The Patriot makes no mention of Martin owning slaves, let alone brutalizing them.
And the Battle of Guildford Court House may have made a rousing finale for The Patriot, but history tells a different story. The Americans actually lost that battle, according to historical records.
One of the other huge problems with The Patriot is its portrayal of the Redcoats as utter sadists. Sure, it’s an American blockbuster about how American war heroes are awesome, but the depths to which it stoops in order to dehumanize the British are terrible. For one, there’s a scene where the Redcoats herd the citizens of one town into a church, barricade them inside and burn it to the ground, killing everyone inside. Funnily enough, there’s no truth to that war crime whatsoever. That is, unless you look forward in time, to 1944, when Nazi soldiers conducted a similar massacre of the French people during World War II. Comparing the British to the Nazis in order to get viewers on the side of an American soldier? For shame.
