Salon has an article about the gross historical inaccuracies in The Patriot. I really, really hate it when movies blur the line between history and historical fiction, and this one seems to have a particularly insidious agenda. Is it necessary to demonize the enemy to make a good war movie? I noticed in U-571 a few weeks ago that they helped the audience understand that the Germans were really, really bad by including a scene where a lifeboat full of helpless Allied sailors was machine gunned. That kind of gratuitous crap is just bad moviemaking.