The Patriot
The Patriot
R | 10 July 1998 (USA)
The Patriot Trailers

A deadly virus threatens to wipe out an entire Rocky Mountain town, leaving the town doctor to find some way to escape the soldiers who enforce the town's quarantine and devise an antidote. Matters take a more deadly turn after the physician is captured by a dangerously unstable band of militia extremists.

Reviews
Chance_Boudreaux19

It's definitely not a movie for Seagal fans as he barely shows of his sweet Aikido moves in this. It's just a boring attempt at drama by Seagal who might actually think people take his movies seriously. Well I like Seagal movies and 80s/90s action flicks, they're fun guilty pleasures but this is not one of them. This movie doesn't qualify as an action movie as there's barely any action in it, it's another movie from Seagal used to show his spiritual side, I think Steve forgot what his movies are meant to do. Seagal does play a doctor in this which made me laugh and he does have a few good lines and shows a couple of cool moves but it is not worth watching just for those few moments.

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jbl-3

Steven Seagal's intent is to be commended, and his acting in this film is equal to that in many of his others, if you ignore the fact that he is supposedly portraying a brilliant scientist. The problem I had was with two items of the plot, which stretched my suspension of disbelief beyond the breaking point.First, how is it that a carefully engineered variation on a nasty germ, whose antidote must be just as carefully researched and engineered by a big lab, is cured by drinking tea from a flower growing high in the mountains? and that Grandpa's family seem to be about the only people who know anything about this?Second, and this one really takes the cake: Having gathered up enough of the cure to fix a whole town, wouldn't you expect the army to land the helicopter and start rushing bags of flowers to all the homes in this small town? No, they instead decide to sprinkle the flowers all over the town and force the sick people to go out and gather them up all over again. Just plain silly, unless under Native belief the power in the drug somehow depends on one's having gone out and gathered the flowers oneself.Add in the cardboard nature of the villains and the unsuitability of the title, and you might think my vote on this movie is actually high.

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goldfish-9

Dr Steven Segal saves the world from a deadly virus outbreak. This movie strikes me as foolish earnestness that has morphed into an unintended camp classic (the best kind). Memorable lines include "Knowledge is like a deer. Chase it, and it will run away from you" and "Drink this. It will make you feel better." It is so sublimely bad -- they couldn't have made it any worse if they tried.Segal tries to convince you that he is 1. sensitive -- by saving a stricken pony; 2. a good father -- by a saccharine cooking scene for his daughter; 3. a man of science -- by looking at a fake spectrum; 4. in tune with nature -- by using homeopathic remedies; 5. politically correct and multicultural -- by having Indian friends; 6. an iconoclast -- by opening a rural practice after a former life in a national research lab; and 7. an action hero -- by being really fat but yet can still fight. ROTFL.It's good to see on as a late-night Saturday flick, with friends, preferably (but not necessarily!) inebriated.

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mads leonard holvik

I think this movie is given a bad wrap because it does not have non-stop bone crunching action and because the villains are stereotyped and the plot lines are predictable and ridiculous. Anyways, Seagal is Dr Wesley McClaren, one of the best immunologists in the USA. But he works as more of a nature medicine practitioner in a small mid-western town. His best friend, Frank, is a cowboy style guy played by L Q James. McClaren also has a daughter and a father who is full blooded Indian and lives in an isolate cabin in the mountains. The arch villain here is the neo nazi white trash survivalist, Floyd Chisolm, played by Gailord Sartain. Chisolm is strangely able to get a hand on a super potent biological weapon, and assuming that the anti dote they have will keep them safe, he unleashes this stuff on his own townspeople. Immediately the army is alerted and seal off the place. So Seagal retreats to a super secret laboratory in the mountains (sick!)where he battles to find an anti dote. Not surprisingly the anti dote turns out to be a herb flower that indians has used for centuries. Not much action yet, and not much you will get until Chisolm gets desperate and sends his "soldiers" to kidnap Seagal and his daughter. Supposedly McClarens daughter is immune because she has native blood. Frank is killed in this process, leaving Seagal no choice but to put Chisolm out of his misery. This is done in a pretty interesting scene where Chisolm invites the kidnapped Seagal for a glass of Bordeaux wine. Seagal responds by talking calmly about what a piece of trash Chisolm is before breaking his wine class with his thumb and index finger and forcing the broken glass into the man's skull. Priceless! To end it off on a high note the army does not go house to house delivering anti dote in capsules or syringes, no, they sprinkle the flowers out from helicopters hovering the town. The director is Dean Semler, the man behind so diverse films as Bruce Almighty, Dead Calm, Young Guns and Cocktail. If it was not for Seagal and the director this would be a piece of trash too, but strangely, I liked it.

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