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Mel Gibson is not known for his subtlety, nor imagination in parts he chooses. Apart, perhaps, from the LETHAL WEAPON films, each one is the same; MAD MAX is BRAVEHEART is RANSOM. But this film is so vaporous and boilerplate it makes the others look like sparkling epiphanies of originality. Are there any true screenwriters left in Arizona Bay? This movie is barely interesting enough to review, but let's take a stab...

By now we all know the basic elements of a typical Mel Gibson film: family man loses part or all of family, then is changed from reluctant to vengeful. One sees this formula repeated from film to film. Also a particularly sadistic main villain (often with a British accent), often coupled with one who is fey or even gay. (Effeminate people are always bad in Gibson films) Said revenge, as in ROAD WARRIOR or BRAVEHEART, is usually in the cause of helping some downtrodden folk, like the fairytale Scots of BRAVEHEART, who despite their numbers cannot possibly succeed without the much more manly Mel at their helm.

Each film he makes, whether as director or star, it seems, is tailored to some fantasy world Gibson likes to see himself as inhabiting(a speculation based upon his famous baby ranch-uh, I mean wife & numerous children). One may assume the death of most women intimate with Mel in his films (MAD MAX, BRAVEHEART, HAMLET, and his wife dead before the start of THE PATRIOT) is a concession to the wife.

But I approach the point. Allow me to digress.

A particular continued theme one can discern in Gibson's oeuvre is the idea that nothing is worth fighting for except the most personal of causes, i.e. revenging a loved one, not the freedom of Scotland, say. (Though Wallace certainly codes the word "freedom" as "revenge" well, eh?) A defensible point, certainly, from some points of view; not mine, but some. (To me it just goes to show how self-involved and wallowingly petty we have become.) But, though I'm no fan of what some call "patriotism," the word, if it has any positive sense, means a commitment to an ideal higher than even family.

So what has this strange revenge fantasy to do with any possible definition of "patriotism?"

I'm going to leave aside most issues of historical inaccuracy, except to say that in that sense this movie is utter bullcrap. No understanding of the times or the reasons for the revolution, nor of anything, really, involved with the subject beyond a first-grader's misunderstanding of it, perhaps, is present; do not watch this for

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