In a scene late in "The Patriot," Mel Gibson's character stands huddled over his dead son, the second of his seven children to have been killed before his eyes. His face wrinkled in agony, his eyes shut tight, he whispers in a choked voice, "God help me, God help me." Coming from someone else, this might be interpreted as a man pleading for God to help him in his pain. Coming from Gibson, it is more like a man pleading that God help him stay under control before he explodes in a fountain of murderous fury. "God, control me because I can't." Gibson gets to express a great deal of tragic rage in "The Patriot," an ambitious, two-hour-and-forty-minute Revolutionary War epic about Benjamin Martin, a character loosely based on a number of actual men who fought guerilla-style in the American Revolution. When the film opens in 1776, Martin is a South Carolina plantation owner who is staunchly against the revolutionary war (although he is not against the colonies seceding from England). Having already seen and taken part in vicious bloodshed in the French and Indian War, Martin just wants to play the part of the good widower, taking care of his seven children and tending his plot of land. .
His oldest son, 18-year-old Gabriel (Heath Ledger), has a little too much of his father's old spirit in him, and he enlists in the colonial army against his father's wishes. Martin manages to stay out of battle for two years until the war arrives at his doorstep in the form of the particularly malicious British Col. William Tavington (Jason Isaacs), who not only burns down Martin's home, but also shoots one of his young sons in the back. Tavington is a character molded in every facet to be hated, and Isaacs plays him with simple, wicked glee. At this point, there is no way Martin can't enter the revolution, although it remains unclear whether his chief motivation to do so is the cause of freedom, his desire for vengeance, or some twisted combination of the two.