The Patriot/YMMV

"Susan: PAPA! Papa, don't go, I'll say anything!"
 * Acceptable Targets: The British. And the French and Americans to lesser extents.
 * Anvilicious: Tavington is cartoonishly evil, missing only a nice mustache to twirl.
 * Complete Monster: Tavington; his offenses include ordering the Martin home burned down after he and his family treated Colonial and British wounded, ordering the rebel wounded killed where they lie, shooting Thomas Martin in the back, and killing off an entire town because they gave aid to Martin and his rebels (the promise of being forgiven turning into "That is between you and God" didn't help). Keep in mind, these are just his on-screen atrocities.
 * "Stupid boy"
 * "You know, it's an ugly business doing one's duty... but just occasionally it's a real pleasure."
 * Then there's shooting a militia member's family, including a little boy that couldn't have been more than five.
 * Completely Missing the Point: Many "reviewers" (including Roger Ebert) were apparently in such a huff over a movie daring to portray the American Revolution as a good thing that they tried to dismiss it as "reducing the American Revolution to being about one man's quest for revenge". Not only is this directly contradicted by the movie itself (which features as a major plot element Benjamin Martin learning that the Revolution is more important than his revenge), but it misses the fact that movie isn't really about the Revolution... it's about one man and his family, and what happens to them during it.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: One of its Oscar nominations was in the "Best Original Score." The score is, in fact, one of the most-used for Oscar ceremony music to this day.
 * Draco in Leather Pants: Combine "being played by someone attractive" with "a chance to be anti-American", and Tavington is beloved by many sociopaths fangirls.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Amazingly enough, Big Bad Tavington is far and away one of the most- if not THE most- popular characters in the eyes of the Fandom, and certainly amongst fanfic writers, even amongst those who do not have the stereotypical reasons for doing so.
 * Evil Is Sexy: Despite being probably the most Evil Brit ever, Tavington still managed to secure himself a nice little fanbase. Being played by Jason Isaacs probably had something to do with it.
 * An especially nice touch including the Draco in Leather Pants linkage in the trope, considering Isaacs is his father.
 * Genius Bonus: The movie isn't quite faithful to the timeline of the Revolutionary War in the south, but a few bones are tossed to serious students of the Revolution.
 * A wounded Gabriel mentions the Green Dragoons cutting down the Virginians, an event that actually happened at the Battle of the Waxhaws (unnamed in the movie).
 * The Battle of Camden (never named in the movie, but named on the DVD chapter) references Horatio Gates' flight, and his faulty dispositions with militia units vs. British Regulars, both historical facts.
 * Daniel Morgan and Nathaniel Greene, two not-quite-household-name Revolutionary War figures make cameos right before the Battle of Cowpens. Morgan led the Americans at Cowpens, Greene at Guilford Courthouse.
 * Greene even mentions the unreliable militia performing badly at Kip's Bay and Princeton, both real battles where yes, the militia performed poorly.
 * The Battle Of Cowpens (a mish-mash of Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse) correctly highlights the "Militia-Fires-Two-Shots-And-Retires-On-Regular-Army" tactic used with great success at Cowpens, with somwhat less success at Guilford.
 * Martin's letter to Charlotte mentions Cornwallis feigning illness so he wouldn't have to personally surrender at Yorktown. A small, amusing, irrelevant to the story - yet true detail.
 * Harsher in Hindsight: The
 * Hatedom: The movie is blatantly pro-American, which resulted in numerous anti-American people hating on it and holding it to much harsher standards than they would if the film had been shot from the other way around.
 * Moral Event Horizon: Tavington crosses this the moment he first appears in the film. People without morals proceeded to cheer for him anyway.
 * Nightmare Fuel: Some of the more gruesome casualties, including a man getting his head taken completely off by a cannonball, another cannonball snapping off a man's leg at the knee, and the scenes in field hospitals.
 * Ron the Death Eater: Benjamin Martin, via a combination of anti-Americanism, Mel Gibson's Hatedom, and Tavington's fangirls. Hilariously, one of the things often cited against the character is that one of the historical inspirations for him was a slave owner, but that the filmmakers didn't "have the guts" to make Martin one. These critics somehow manage to hate on Martin for owning slaves and not owning slaves.
 * America in general.
 * Tear Jerker:
 * When Susan finally speaks to her father.


 * When
 * Values Dissonance: A crackdown on customs duties and billeting troops on the locals without any say in a distant British parliament was Serious Business back then, but apparently not serious enough for Hollywood now.