The Patriot (Extended Cut) [Blu-ray] (Region 2) (Import)

Good movie - but not as good as Braveheart.

All official EU-Languages are as subtitles on this Blu Ray beside Italian, German and the Baltic Languageas.
I can't understand Columbia Pictures why Italian and German are missing....

Audio: English PCM 5.1, Czech 5.1, French 5.1, Polish 5.1

Subtitles: Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finish, French, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Korean, Norwegain, Polish, Portuguese, Romnanina, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish

Special Features:
- The Art of war featurette
- The true patriots featurette

EAN: 5050629044119

Okay, I'm going to nail my colors to the mast here: not only do I like Roland Emmerich's The Patriot, but I also think it's also a damn good film, and not just because so many films about the Revolutionary War are so pitifully bad (Revolution, cough cough). While it is driven by the simplistic revenge motif that all American epics seem to need to stand a chance at the box-office, it does give a good sense of the slow progress of the war as it deteriorated from a `civilized' confrontation waged according to the rules of battle to an increasing vicious guerrilla war for survival. The battles are convincingly brutal and for perhaps the first time in a movie it shows how cannonballs were really used - not as explosives but to smash their way through the flesh and bone of the opposing ranks of soldiers.

Yes, it glosses over the real Swamp Fox's racism in favor of an idealized vision of racial harmony and it invents a church-burning incident redolent of old anti-Nazi propaganda films (revenge on Herr Director's part, perhaps?), but it's not quite as simplistic as that. For much of the first half Mel Gibson's character takes no prisoners himself, taking genuine pleasure in killing surrendering British troops until he persuaded to stop more for propaganda reasons than moral ones. Similarly, it points out that this was initially very much a civil war, with colonial settlers divided among themselves over where their loyalties lay (people tend to forget that rather than Americans vs. British, it was British vs. British at that time). Certainly history gets a better deal here than it did in Gibson's own Braveheart. And give it credit for at least not having Gibson stab the bad guy with Old Glory.

Don't use it as a history lesson by any means, though it's not quite the travesty outraged tabloids have implied, but as a lavish, old-fashioned epic, complete with a cast of thousands (even if many of them are digital), glorious widescreen photography and a fine score by John Williams. Unfortunately, while the theatrical cut boasts a good array of extras, not all of them - the audio commentary by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, stills gallery and trailers in particular - have not been carried over to the extended cut.

As the biographer of a Scots officer killed in the Southern Campaigns of the American War, and having visited one of the locations during filming in 1999, I can say this film is historically hysterical. The script is trite, every plot 'twist' more or less signposted in neon lights, and the white-washing (I use that word deliberately) of slavery and the attribution of WW2 SS atrocities to the British Legion despicable and morally irresponsible. The geography is a little odd and the chronology is off-beam (the British occupying Charleston in 1778 instead of 1780? The battle of Cowpens in October 1780, instead of Jan. '81? ). There's the usual confusion of referring to 'England' and 'the English' when 'Britain' and 'British' are meant, which really annoys the rest of us over here! Even the uniforms of the Legion (a Loyal American unit) have been changed from green to red with green facings so US audiences will know which side they're on! - exactly as happened in Alan Alda's comedy 'Sweet Liberty'! 'The Patriot' is a flag-waving farrago (literally - there's a lot of homing-in on flags and crosses, and a flag gets used in what I'd've thought the US would consider a most disrespectful way versus a hapless SFX horse!). It's deeply offensive to those of us whose families suffered at the hands of the real-life equivalent of the film's 'heroes'. It has also annoyed the fellow-citizens and family of the former Liverpool MP on whom the anti-hero is clearly meant to be based, who was by no means as bad as Rebel propaganda and the film portrayed... However, it gets 3 stars from me for the following: a) The cinematography is beautiful, as are the women's costumes (though Charlotte (Joely Richardson) doesn't dress like a widow!). b) It does have some thrilling cavalry charges. There's a lot of boring jingoistic schmaltz to wade through between the bits where the Dragoons turn up, but they make it worthwhile... Just listen for the hoof-beats! c) There's a cracking swashbuckler of a scene in a small-scale skirmish, with the young Dragoon Colonel Will Tavington (Jason Isaacs) getting stuck into the Rebs with sabre in one hand, pistol in the other. In the '1066 & All That' phrase, "extremely dashing in all directions", and looking very, erm... Byronic (hair down, shirt open)! (Why I went to see it *twice*!) 'The Patriot' will improve on being watched in a double-bill with Alan Alda's 'Sweet Liberty', which I know the crew were watching on video while they were making it! That film was truly prophetic!