There's something painfully new age about Steven Seagal movies when he was at the height of his fame in the mid 1990s . The irony was that he couldn't see the woods for the trees and insisted cut down the forest . People go to watch bad guys get mashed by the good guys in action movies . The problem was that while ON DEADLY GROUND the portrayal of good and bad was too black and white there by allowing the good guy to commit mass murder on the bad guys and getting away with it ( Yes the good guy in that film should have been charged with multiple murder regardless of his motives ) but the problem with THE PATRIOT is that logically there's no real idealogical difference between the villains and the hero in this movie
Well first of all THE PATRIOT isn't as bad as most other Seagal movies such as ON DEADLY GROUND and I wouldn't say it's the worst film called THE PATRIOT whose accolade is held by the Mel Gibson star vehicle where he declares war on the goose stepping jackbooted Red Coats during the American Civil War but this is merely damning praise similar to saying a Junta of some banana republic is infinitely better than Adolph Hitler . It's a very strange film that often gives the impression that it wants to be a fast paced bio-thriller similar to say OUTBREAK or perhaps even the original version of THE CRAZIES with a very anti right wing / militarist agenda but any subtle and latent subtext is missing because it's a Steven Seagal movie which means new age methods to present day problems which are self contradictory similar to Prof Richard Dawkins hare brained schemes such as atheists for Jesus and the Brights Movement . In fact you're left with the feeling there's several different films trying to escape from the confusion
Now I come to think of it Seagal would be at home with dull and confused movement . The villain of the piece is a militia leader called Floyd Chisolm who wants to see America return to the good old days of the founding fathers when America was built on free values . It's not difficult to believe that Seagal's character ( Apologies if I used the word character because it's Seagal playing Seagal ) agrees with Chisolm and says so towards the end . Before we reach this scene we're constantly shown Seagal riding around on a horse , hob nobbing with Native Americans , flower arranging ( No seriously he does ) and criticising the American bio-weapons division that he used to work for , so much so you wonder why don't Seagal and Chisolm join together and fight global corporate capitalism starting in Montana ? That's because Chisolm murders and kidnaps people and is greedy for power and Seagal isn't , so despite wanting to see a world where the industrial revolution didn't happen and negating all the good work that science has brought humanity in the last 200 hundred years and both sharing an unhealthy fetish for guns one's inherently good and one's inherently bad
Like so many other films with an obvious message the message gets lost in the delivery . It does make the point that holistic medicine is good and that it insinuates modern medicine is bad because you know , it's controlled by ruthless corporations that might actually have a cure for everything but they don't want to produce cures because it's much more profitable to treat illness rather than cure it outright . And in a scene that bludgeons the audience over the head in its message we're told that " Viruses are soon going to be the smart bombs of the future " Right so if you release a virus in Afghanistan it'll wipe out of the Afghans opposed to NATO , jump next door to Pakistan and kill all the Taliban and their allies in Al-Queda . Wow that is smart . Smarter than most of this film in fact
Well first of all THE PATRIOT isn't as bad as most other Seagal movies such as ON DEADLY GROUND and I wouldn't say it's the worst film called THE PATRIOT whose accolade is held by the Mel Gibson star vehicle where he declares war on the goose stepping jackbooted Red Coats during the American Civil War but this is merely damning praise similar to saying a Junta of some banana republic is infinitely better than Adolph Hitler . It's a very strange film that often gives the impression that it wants to be a fast paced bio-thriller similar to say OUTBREAK or perhaps even the original version of THE CRAZIES with a very anti right wing / militarist agenda but any subtle and latent subtext is missing because it's a Steven Seagal movie which means new age methods to present day problems which are self contradictory similar to Prof Richard Dawkins hare brained schemes such as atheists for Jesus and the Brights Movement . In fact you're left with the feeling there's several different films trying to escape from the confusion
Now I come to think of it Seagal would be at home with dull and confused movement . The villain of the piece is a militia leader called Floyd Chisolm who wants to see America return to the good old days of the founding fathers when America was built on free values . It's not difficult to believe that Seagal's character ( Apologies if I used the word character because it's Seagal playing Seagal ) agrees with Chisolm and says so towards the end . Before we reach this scene we're constantly shown Seagal riding around on a horse , hob nobbing with Native Americans , flower arranging ( No seriously he does ) and criticising the American bio-weapons division that he used to work for , so much so you wonder why don't Seagal and Chisolm join together and fight global corporate capitalism starting in Montana ? That's because Chisolm murders and kidnaps people and is greedy for power and Seagal isn't , so despite wanting to see a world where the industrial revolution didn't happen and negating all the good work that science has brought humanity in the last 200 hundred years and both sharing an unhealthy fetish for guns one's inherently good and one's inherently bad
Like so many other films with an obvious message the message gets lost in the delivery . It does make the point that holistic medicine is good and that it insinuates modern medicine is bad because you know , it's controlled by ruthless corporations that might actually have a cure for everything but they don't want to produce cures because it's much more profitable to treat illness rather than cure it outright . And in a scene that bludgeons the audience over the head in its message we're told that " Viruses are soon going to be the smart bombs of the future " Right so if you release a virus in Afghanistan it'll wipe out of the Afghans opposed to NATO , jump next door to Pakistan and kill all the Taliban and their allies in Al-Queda . Wow that is smart . Smarter than most of this film in fact