Patriot, The

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

This bloody celebration finally gives the American Revolution the epic it deserves.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A thunderous spectacle.

Time Richard Schickel

It has everything you want in an epic: sweep, scope, wild reversals of fortune and plenty of bold, basic emotions.

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

Sentimental, overbearing, flag-waving--and a crowd-pleaser.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

Doesn't try too hard to be anything other than a vicarious experience that makes you crave the satisfaction you know you'll get when the hero gets his revenge.

Philadelphia Inquirer Desmond Ryan

If Emmerich had any sense, he would have ceded the direction of the battle scenes to his star.

USA Today Mike Clark

Emmerich might have had a masterpiece, but he'll have to settle for what comes close to being a must-see movie today.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

It's often corny, but it's never boring, and it'll sweep you up in its momentum if you give it a chance.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The best movie I've seen about the Revolutionary War.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It is rousing and entertaining, and you get your money's worth.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It's big, exciting, ambitious, and it makes you cry in all the right places.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

What might have been a treat for history buffs and a refresher course for the rest of us turns into just another occasion to watch Gibson shoot guns, swing tomahawks, and wreak other kinds of havoc on enemies we've been primed to hate.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Has a flag-waving dumbness at its core.

Newsweek David Ansen

There's no denying that Emmerich's film, though a good half hour too long, keeps us watching.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Has some emotional pull and isn't stuffy and dull.

TNT RoughCut J. Rentilly

Only so much (pop)cornball tubthumping, a sweeping, occasionally stirring, always gorgeous bit of action-figure history.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Mostly, the movie is riveting, well-done fare -- the stuff of Hollywood epic adventure.

Slate David Edelstein

It's depressing that this first movie in years to dramatize the American Revolution has so little to do with the politics of secession and so much to do with pop-culture themes of vigilantism.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

"We, the people" have never been big fans of movies about the American Revolutionary War. The Patriot, however, appears to be the movie that will break that historical jinx.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It's a death-wish revenge thriller posing as a lavishly pastoral historical epic.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

As a whole, though, the movie is much less magnetic or believable than its star.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Far from the smart historical epic some might have expected, is just another feisty summer shoot-'em-up.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

While the film contains some terrific, realistically bloody battle scenes, it has a distinctly Germanic feel, both in its epic heaviness and in the peculiar way it revises the history of the American Revolution.

Film.com Robert Horton

Gibson's performance is robbed of his customary humor, and he flounders around in search of the character's core.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Patriot reflects on nothing, except perhaps that the American Revolution was a golden opportunity for Mel Gibson to go postal.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Shamelessly stirring, brandishing Mr. Gibson's anguished masculinity like a musket. It may be effective, but you leave the theater feeling used.

Portland Oregonian Bob Thomas

Seems likely to stir rebuttal from historians, especially those on the other side of the pond.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

The Patriot makes the Revolutionary War look like super-produced studio footage of the L.A. riots.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

A movie of cornball sentiment, humorously anachronistic dialogue, and expensive Colonial Williamsburg sets.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The film is long, empty and bogus.

Film.com Sean Means

Trots out more flag-waving wartime cliches than any movie since John Wayne's "The Alamo."

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Does benefit from Gibson's charisma...Whether it is quite good enough is another question.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Undeniably handsome..., but no cliché is left unturned, right down to the spray of toy soldiers falling from the hand of a dead child. Everything old isn't new again.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

Whatever extraordinary ingredients are necessary to fashion a 1776 home run, this movie doesn't have them.

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

Overblown sanctimony and sentimentalism as corny as the Fourth of July.