Mel Gibson can be a terrific actor. If he were to burst through my front door right now, his face twisted in rage, claiming that the Redcoats had killed his sons and had burned a church filled with women and children—no matter that the Revolutionary War ended 217 years ago—there is little doubt that I would dash out of the house with him, adrenaline pumping through my neck, ready to do battle with the enemy.

In "The Patriot", as many of you surely know, Gibson plays Benjamin Martin, a farmer apathetically loyal to the Crown until the evil English Colonel Tavington shoots his son, thereby unleashing on England the full fury of this energetic and occasionally charismatic actor. As "Lethal Weapon" demonstrated, when the bad guys need getting, there’s no better getter than Gibson.

Like a roller coaster ride, this movie kept me emotionally involved for more than two-and-one-half hours. Though there were tedious parts and excessive violence made more intolerable by slow-motion, the movie twisted my emotions into knots. I laughed. I cried. I was outraged.

And then came the credits. By the time the name of the guy who delivered pizza slowly scrolled off the screen—or maybe it was the second assistant to the assistant who delivered pizza—I felt used and mentally greasy, as though buttered popcorn had seeped into my brain. It’s one thing to invent a cartoon contingent of bad guys to entertain us with shooting and swordplay similar to the cops-and-robber play of my childhood, but it’s quite another matter to imply that the English committed atrocities which Revolutionary patriots revenged.

By the time of our Revolution, England had been struggling to define freedom for more than 100 years. The exiled John Locke, who initiated the Enlightenment in England and who returned to England during the Glorious Revolution of 1689, wrote that a just government is one in which the people are sovereign and the king is merely a delegate.

By the 18^th century, Englishmen were adamant about their freedom, viewing themselves as free above all others, though property ownership and other restrictions meant that only 5 percent of the adult male population were eligible to vote.

Slavery was first banned in England in 1569, during the reign of Elizabeth I, when the Cartwright decision decreed that: "England was too pure an air for slaves to breathe in." Though England transported slaves from Africa to the colonies, in a 1772 court ruling, James Somersett, a Virginia slave who attempted to run away from his owner in London, was set free with the declaration that "... as soon as any slave sets foot upon English territory, he becomes free."

Unfortunately, this decision did not extend to the colonies, which had been formed as territorial and mercantile outposts, not as separate but equal English states. Their indeterminate political status, of course, is what led to conflicts between the colonists, who wanted to govern themselves, and England, which was fighting Spain and France and wanted the colonies to support these efforts and pay more towards their own defense.

In other words, the conflict that led to the Revolution had nothing to do with atrocities committed against women and children.

Soldiers responsible for the Boston Massacre in 1770, in which British troops threatened by a mob opened fire, killing five, were charged with murder. John Adams, who would later become the second President of the United States, was the defense attorney in their trial in which the commanding officer and most of the soldiers were acquitted.

As you probably remember, Crispus Attucks, a black sailor and former slave, was the first person killed at the Massacre. Ironically, African Americans would not secure voting rights, the kind of freedom so valued by the Revolutionary colonialists, until the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, a full 188 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Our Revolution has a rich and complicated history. It’s a pity that its rendering in "The Patriot" was so violent, fallacious, and racist.