The Patriot (nothing to do with the Mel Gibson film of the same name) came out Steven Seagal was still doing that 'saving the environment' thing in his movies. Which is fine. But it doesn't make for good action.
When the plot(?) of this film finally kicked in I saw the twist(?) coming a mile off. Seagal's anti-warfare, care-for-mother-nature stance is not very subtle. For a film that was originally going to debut in the cinemas it is shot very much like a TV movie despite some wonderful shots of the country by Dean Semler, the photographer of Dances with Wolves.
Steven Seagal does like 1 fight scene in the entire film and it's totally boring. As an action film it fails, as a drama it stinks, as an environmental message it's obvious. Avoid like Ebola crossed with plague.
The Patriot
1998
Action / Thriller
The Patriot
1998
Action / Thriller
Plot summary
Doctor Wesley McClaren is an immunologist in Ennis, Montana, and he has turned down an offer to join his friend Richard Bach, who lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is the head of a unit called the Biological Response Team (BRT). Wesley and his daughter Holly live on a farm in Ennis, and a farmhand named Frank lives with them. Just over the hill from the farm, a 52 day standoff against militia leader Floyd Chisolm has ended. Floyd has decided to be his own attorney in court. Everyone is shocked when Floyd spits on Judge Tomkins. After the hearing, Tomkins starts feeling sick. Holly, like she always does, stops at Wesley's office after school so she can go home with Wesley. On their way home, Wesley gets a call on his mobile phone. Wesley rushes to the hospital with Holly and tells her to wait in the doctors' lounge, then Wesley is taken to see Tomkins, who looks awful. Wesley is told that Tomkins collapsed in his chambers at the court building. Wesley sees a cop collapse, while Tomkins has a seizure. Wesley calls Richard and tells him to send the BRT. Army medical units are sent in, and Ennis is sealed off. Wesley tells Frank to stay in town instead of going to the farm, then Wesley tells Holly to stay where she is, because the town is dealing with an outbreak. Richard arrives in town and talks to Wesley, who knows that some kind of toxin has been released. Wesley asks Richard about an anti-toxin, then they go to Tomkins's room, where Tomkins has died. Richard tells Wesley that the toxin is a warfare product called NAM37, which is ten times more potent than anthrax. Richard also tells Wesley that a technician working for NAM37's developers stole a big sample of the NAM37 and was detained by security in Billings, Montana, one day after the NAM37 was sold to Floyd, but the technician killed himself before anyone could ask him any questions. After buying the NAM37, Floyd infected himself and started the outbreak by spitting on Tomkins. So far, 94 people have been infected, and the NAM37 has killed 5 people. Wesley takes a sample of Holly's blood, and Floyd is visited in jail by his right hand man and medical expert Nate Pogue, who has also been infected. and the anti-toxin Floyd bought along with the NAM37 only slows the NAM37 down instead of being a cure. Floyd's plan was to start the outbreak, then use the anti-toxin on himself. Floyd tells Pogue to get him out so they can get the anti-toxin that the army has brought into town. Later, a group of men led by Pogue return to the jail, where they kill all of the guards and get Floyd out. Floyd and Pogue go to the hospital with their men, and they take the hospital hostage in hopes of getting the anti-toxin, only to discover that the army's anti-toxin is the same anti-toxin Floyd bought. Richard explains that there have been times when NAM37 has mutated, and when it does, the anti-toxin doesn't work. Pogue sees Holly's blood sample and the sample shows that Holly has been infected, but somehow, she's okay and her body is fighting it off. Floyd wants Holly found. When one of Floyd's men finds Holly in the lounge and tries to grab her, Wesley beats the man up and goes to the farm with Holly and Frank. Floyd's men head to Wesley's farm, where Frank ambushes them and kills all of them except for one man, who kills Frank. Wesley and Holly take off with Frank's body, and ride their horses to a farm where Holly's Grandpa lives, and they give Frank a proper burial. Wesley takes a blood sample from his friend Ann, and just like Holly, Ann's body is fighting off the NAM37. Leaving Holly at her Grandpa's house, Wesley and Ann go to an underground lab that Wesley used to work in, where they plan to come up with a cure. Pogue, who is still at the hospital with Floyd, thinks he has found a cure, but he needs Holly's blood to isolate it. After Wesley finds the reason why Ann and Holly are not being affected by the virus, Wesley and Holly go home...where Holly is kidnapped by Floyd's men. Now Wesley must go to Floyd's headquarters and rescue Holly.
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So boring I forgot that it even existed
Seagal's first truly bad movie
A ho-hum drama thriller which uses OUTBREAK as the basis for its plot and wastes the martial arts talents of star Steven Seagal. Any fan looking for Seagal's usual brand of bone-breaking action will be sorely disappointed by the total lack of fighting in this movie. Action is limited to one or two brief sequences and the rest of this long, long film is taken up with moralising, Native American mythology, and plenty of uninteresting dialogue. Imagine the less-than-satisfying ON DEADLY GROUND: a movie full of action, let down by some boring environmental stuff. Now swap that ratio around: a movie full of boring mundaneness, with only a few moments of action. Now you'll realise how disappointing a film THE PATRIOT is for big man Seagal and why it's his weakest movie to date.
The list of flaws is an endless one. The plot is silly and contrived, the in-your-face moralising is annoying and preachy. The production values make the film look cheap and poor editing in what few action scenes there are means that it all happens too fast to see what's going on. No arms or legs are broken and the only real bit of violence (aside from some shooting) is a satisfying death involving the jagged stem of a wine glass and a man's ear. The characters are one-dimensional and the acting poor, especially from the rather dull villains who don't even do the good thing by chewing the scenery. The only familiar performer is old-timer L. Q. Jones who is wasted in a nothing part as one of those old men Seagal likes to hang around with. As for Seagal, despite looking ridiculous (glasses + shoulder length bushy hair + bright red sweat don't go) in his most overweight performance, puts in his typically gruff yet friendly part and is the best actor in the film (so you know you're in trouble). Not sure what kind of market the producers of this tosh were hoping to aim at - as an action film it's totally hopeless, as an ecological thriller it's predictable and clichéd. Any way you look at it, THE PATRIOT is a film to be avoided at all costs.
Confused Politics
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