'' The Patriot '' was criticized for misrepresenting atrocities during the Revolutionary War , including the killing of prisoners of war and wounded soldiers and burning a church filled with townsfolk . While atrocities occurred during the war , the most striking of the film 's depictions of British atrocities — the burning of a church full of unarmed colonial civilians — had virtually no factual basis nor parallel in the American or European 18th century wars , with the exception of the Massacre at Lucs-sur-Boulogne in 1794 , which was a purely French affair with no connection to British troops nor the American Revolution . The '' New York Post '' film critic Jonathan Foreman was one of several focusing on this distortion in the film and wrote the following in an article at Salon.com : The most disturbing thing about '' The Patriot '' is not just that German director Roland Emmerich ( director of '' Independence Day ) '' and his screenwriter Robert Rodat ( who was criticized for excluding the roles played by British and other Allied troops in the Normandy landings from his script for '' Saving Private Ryan '' ) depicted British troops as committing savage atrocities , but that those atrocities bear such a close resemblance to war crimes carried out by German troops — particularly the SS in World War II . It 's hard not to wonder if the filmmakers have some kind of subconscious agenda ... They have made a film that will have the effect of inoculating audiences against the unique historical horror of Oradour — and implicitly rehabilitating the Nazis while making the British seem as evil as history 's worst monsters ... So it 's no wonder that the British press sees this film as a kind of blood libel against the British people . '' The Washington Post '' film critic Stephen Hunter , a historian of the era , said : " Any image of the American Revolution which represents you Brits as Nazis and us as gentle folk is almost certainly wrong . It was a very bitter war , a total war , and that is something that I am afraid has been lost to history .... T he presence of the Loyalists ( colonists who did not want to join the fight for independence from Britain ) meant that the War of Independence was a conflict of complex loyalties . " The historian Richard F. Snow , editor of '' American Heritage '' magazine , said of the church-burning scene : " Of course it never happened — if it had do you think Americans would have forgotten it ? It could have kept us out of World War I. " '' Slate '' columnist Michael Lind criticized the identification of the leading character 's actions with patriotism . Specifically , Lind stated that " this movie is deeply subversive patriotism . Indeed , patriotism is a concept that neither the screenwriter ... nor the director ... seems to understand " . He further wrote that " the message of '' The Patriot '' is that country is an abstraction , family is everything . It should have been called '' The Family Man '' "
Oradour
Oradour-sur-Glane massacre
The Patriot (2000 film)