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Mistakes

In the final battle scene where Benjamin is fighting Tavington one-on-one, the camera angle widens and shows the whole battle scene. In the bottom right corner, you can see another camera filming the action. See more...

Trivia

By the time Heath Ledger won this role, he was flat broke. He recalled, 'It came to the point where I had like, no money.' He was practically living on Ramen noodles by that time. This was because he 'got nothing offers to do these teen movies and television sitcoms', and he refused to do them due to the 'very little depth' of the scripts. By the time he was accepted for The Patriot, he said later, 'I guess I put myself in a situation where I didn't belong. But saying no turned out to be more valuable than saying yes.' See more...

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The Patriot (2000) - 42 corrections

Directed by Roland Emmerich, starring Chris Cooper, Heath Ledger, Jason Isaacs, Joely Richardson, Mel Gibson (add more)

Genres: Action, Drama, War

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

Mistakes
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In the scene where Benjamin Martin receives mail from the mail carrier, he fails to pay him the postage. At the time period, postage was always payed by the receiving party rather then the sender. [It was common practice at that time for well to do men, such as Benjamin Martin, to have an account at the post office much like he would have had at supply stores where he would pay monthly, or possibly after harvest times.]
Edit
At the scene where the surrendering redcoats are killed, after one kneeling is shot in the head, look to the left and a little farther in the background of this action. You can see an actor who is supposed to be stabbing a redcoat on the ground, but it actually looks like he's spanking him to death. [How do you know he was supposed to be stabbing him to death? We see the patriots using the butts of their guns to kill red coats throughout the movie. This particular one could be doing the same.]
Edit
During the battle of Cowpens, the bigot who has a change of heart says to the slave that "It's October" and "it's been over twelve months", meaning that the slave is free. All good and well. However, the Battle of Cowpens was fought in the month of January not October. [Although largely based on actual events, the film is an historical fiction. Plenty of details surrounding timeline, identities, actions, etc are changed for drama. In fact, the battle is never actually identified as the Battle of Cowpens in the film, though it's based on the real battle. The date was likely chosen to fit the timeline better.]
Edit Time
Gabriel writes in his letter that his friend was killed at Elizabethtown. Freeze the frame and you'll see that the letter actually states he was killed at Monmouth. [The requirement to freeze the frame invalidates this mistake.]
Edit
When the church is burned down and Anne is inside, the congregation is burned to death. Then, when they find the necklace that was given to Anne, it is still attached to the string. How could a ribbon and metal charm still be in good shape if the fire burned down the church? [Since it wasn't around the neck of Anne's body, we can assume that it fell off and then most likely got kicked by the panicked crowd into an area that didn't get as much fire damage.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
In the last battle, Col. Tavington is racing towards Benjamin Martin (flag in hand) on his horse. Martin then kneels and stabs Tavington's horse, sending the horse flying. Freeze frame here, you can clearly see that the horse is on a track; the mechanics are visible on the bottom right of the screen. (The filmming crew used a fake horse for this, as mentioned in the special effects featurette on the DVD version). [Per the rules of this site, if you have to pause or freeze-frame to see it, it's not a movie mistake.]
Edit
The official design of the flag was 13 alternate red and white stripes, with a blue canton containing 13 stars, but the Continental Congress never specified any design for the stars.  One variation was the circle of stars seen in the film, but it is very unlikely that every flag would have used this design. Many flags at the time had varying numbers of stripes, plus a Union Jack in the canton. [Unlikely but not impossible, so it's not a mistake.]
Edit
As the Battle of Cowpens opens, we see British artillery firing on the Continentals. Normally, that would not be a mistake, except that the artillery shown is seige artillery used on forts and such. The British would probably have used smaller cannon against advancing troop columns. ["Probably" doesn't qualify as a mistake, unless you know for a fact they didn't use this type of artillery.]
Edit
When Charlotte gets the children out of bed to flee from the British, Susan is barefooted when Charlotte picks her up and they flee the house. The next morning, Susan has shoes. [This is not a mistake, we don't know what happened in the meantime, they'd have had several hours to get some shoes from somewhere else (e.g. form another family on their way to their refuge).]
Edit Corrected by Ronnie Bischof
After the ship explodes and the woman proclaims, "Oh, fireworks. Lovely," Tavington downs his drink and places his glass gently on a surface to his left, yet we hear the sound of glass breaking, as if he had slammed or thrown it down. In fact, if you look closely you can see he hasn't even finished putting it down when we hear the sound effect. [In my DVD version you can't see the glass anymore when you hear the sound. And if he throws the glass down powerful enough, there is no proof that the sound isn't corresponding with the impact of the glass.]
Edit Corrected by Ronnie Bischof Time
After Tavington is down by the creek shaving, he comes back up the hill and gets on his horse. He is supposed to be sticking something in his chest pocket, but you can clearly see it miss and fall to the ground. [That's his straight razor he loses. And people can actually do this in real life, especially with the stress of being under attack and unarmed.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
It's strange that all the "Redcoats" in the entire film have pronounced British accents. When you consider nearly 90% of the British force was made up of German mercenaries, it's odd that we never hear any speak in German or any with the slightest hint of a German accent. [While you are right that there were numerous German mercenaries fighting on the side of the British during the war, their numbers were nowhere near 90%. Rough estimates put it at around 25%, largely located in the Northern colonies which the British felt as "captured" and those not worth wasting British troops to guard. Also, Lord Cornwallis would never have fought with any troops other than British troops he had trained and knew their duty to his satisfaction.]
Edit
In the scene where Tavington is being told by Corwallis he may use "brutal" tactics, Tavington says he would not be able to return to England after committing such acts of violence. Cornwallis offers him the bribe of an enormous portion of American land. Tavington says "Tell me about Ohio." Ohio didn't not become an Amercan territory until after the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Ohio wasn't actually American land. [The Ohio River Valley was a British controlled territory at the time of the Revolution. Although many of the original colonial charters included parts of this area, the area was jointly claimed by France and Britain. It officially became part of the British Empire after the French & Indian War (Seven Years War in Europe). Tavington knew the colonies would eventually spread into this area and he wanted to control a big part of it when they did. To bad for him, the Americans won their independence, and in doing so the U.S. was given the Ohio River Valley as a concession in the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution in 1783. The Ohio River Valley was formally organized into several territories with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.]
Edit Corrected by Mark English
In the scene were Benjamin Martin is fighting Travington in the Battle of Cowspen, there is a shot of the overall battle and Martin starts to advance on Travington. Go to the scene before that, and in slow motion see Martin losing his pistol as it flies through the air. But because of film editing, he has it in the next shot. [Benjamin throws the gun away because he has already fired the shot. In the next scene you can see him running with a second gun tucked in his belt. That is the gun you see him holding in a later scene.]
Edit
During the Battle of Cowpens, the militia did fire two shots and was then allowed to withdraw, giving the British Army the impression that the Americans were fleeing. The Continental Army was also waiting for the British to fall into this trap. But the Continental Army was not waiting at the bottom of a hill as depicted in the movie. Only the troops landed by the British Navy at Gallipoli during World War I were foolish enough to dig in on the low ground. [At the Battle of Cowpens, the Continental Army did use a "reverse slope" ambush. A "reverse slope" ambush is where the main force waits on the back side of a hill at a point lower than the crest. The enemy is then lured to rapidly pursue fleeing forces over the crest of the hill. When the enemy reaches the top of the hill they are silohuetted against the skyline and are easy targets for the ambushing force. The volly delivered by the ambushing Continental Army was devestating to the British force, which combined with the surprise and confusion, allowed the Continental Army to win the Battle of Cowpens. (I've no idea what the Battle of Gallipolie has to do with this movie.).]
Edit
Throughout the movie when loading their pistols, the characters are always seen ramming the musket balls into their guns and then throwing the ramrod away. In reality soldiers were taught to always place the ramrod back in the gun after they were done ramming. It would be impossible to fire the gun again if they did not have a ramrod to ram the next musket ball in. [It is quite likely that the soldiers would have tossed their ram rods aside BRIEFLY, so that they could slightly shorten the reloading process (which is a good thing to do if you're required to stand up in the open in order to reload.) You'll see Civil War skirmishers (reenactors who engage paper targets with live ammunition) do it all the time, in order to maintain the muzzleloading musket's goal of 3 rounds per minute. Once they fired, they would have picked the ram rod up again to reload, then toss it aside again.]
Edit
Tavington supposedly knew where to find the Martin family by asking Wilkins who lived in the home he had burned down, yet that home was no longer occupied, and he would not have known to look for them at Charlotte's house. [First he asked him who lived in that home. Then he asked him where Martin would hide his children. Wilkins said he would lead Tavington to Charlotte's house.]
Edit
The flames from the torch that are burning the church are WAY up high on the building, far away from the door. A split second later, tons of smoke comes pouring into the church from under the door. [Yes, because another torch was thrown in front of the doors (we don't see it happen). You can see when they show the outside the church that there are flames (a torch) in front of the doors, presumably there to prevent anyone's escape if they managed to break through the chains on the doors.]
Edit
In church, Anne is wearing the necklace that Benjamin later gave her as a wedding gift when she and Gabriel got married. [The necklace Anne wears in church is one with a cross on it. The necklace she receives from Benjamin is one with a polestar.]
Edit
There are numerous references made to "Redcoats" in a sense of fear, as though they are the elite troops of the time, I think "We're talking about real redcoats here," even pops up as a line. Whilst this elitism may have been true, nearly 90% of the troops sent to America during the American Revolution were poorly-trained German mercenaries (from the German state of Saxe-Hess), not properly-trained British soldiers as it was too expensive to send the proper troops, and the American generals knew about this flaw. [Which is why the Colonials are so afraid of "real" Redcoats. They knew they were better than the regular German opponents.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall

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