Patton

Rating:
Summary: A fitting tribute to a man larger than life
Review: General George Patton was one of the greatest Americans. Period. That's why only a movie as good as this one could portray his greatness.

Patton is a three hour epic about the eccentric military genius, played by the great George C. Scott. This is a typical "man movie," filled with exciting action shots and plenty of bravado. George C. Scott's Patton is charismatic, a bit crazy, and incredibly inspiring. The film is very informative, and it solifdifies General Patton's reputuation as the only military commander feared and respected by the Nazis.

i didn't know much about Patton before watching this, but I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of him now. The producers of the film set out to make this a biopic about General Patton and his colorful personality. What resulted from their efforts, however, was a movie that glorified war more than any movie could. Don't expect it to be like Saving Private Ryan, it's more of a romanticized look at one individual and a bygone era.

The DVD contains plenty of special features, including previews of other Fox war movies and a "making of" video. I particularly enjoyed watching that, because of Oliver Stone's funny argument that "Patton" was the direct cause for the invasion of Cambodia.

If you're looking for history films, look no further than Patton. It's quite a long film, but it takes that long to give justice to a man like General Patton.

Rating:
Summary: Patton is top brass!
Review: Patton is a film that was made in 1970. It's a film that tells the story of one of America's most remembered and most telling characters in history. George C. Scott gives the performance of the century playing George S. Patton, looking and sounding and acting just like the real Patton, as recorded by Gen. Omar Bradley in which the film is based on.

Patton is a very different war movie. It was quite revolutionary in its time. Unlike a lot of war movies that survive off special effects, gore and heroism, Patton shines with its drama and realism as you follow the war-time biography of Patton. You learn a great deal about the politics, the system of the upper brass in our armed forces, and the frustration to coordinate and perform critical opperations. You also learn a great deal about the man, Patton, himself.

There is so much character developing, so much hard work put into the character of Patton, it clearly pays off in a huge way. This film will intrigue you as well as enlighten you. Patton's character is entertaining, he's real, he's distant yet close when it comes to relating, and he can be serious as well as funny. All of this makes Patton a master piece.

There is one little problem I had with the film. And that is I wasn't really pleased with Patton's heroic march through the winter of '44 to save the sieged soldiers. It wasn't very clear and it had little to no action in it, just telling you that they won it. This wasn't satisfactory, and yet it was Patton's highlight of his military career. A major let down, but it wasn't major enough to ruin the film. Thankfully. If it wasn't for the structure of the film, which already lacked action and engagements of battles, this might've ruined it if you are somebody who is interested in detailed history of the occurrences in WWII like me.

Overall Patton is a very powerful, dramatic film that circles around a man and his obsession with being a combat general in the heat of a war. It's a film that you will probably see more than once because it is a very special film.
You cannot get enough Patton, his character will live on because it comes across so powerfully in this film. It is a character and a story you are unlikely to forget.

Grade: A

Rating:
Summary: Best movie of all time!
Review: While there are many historical inaccuracies in this movie, it does a fabulous job of portraying both Gen Patton and WWII. I saw this movie when I was fourteen and have never seen a movie that could surpass it. Patton was a very complicated person and the movie does not portray what a complex person he was, it was simply impossible in three hours. The best theatrical performance of all time!

Rating:
Summary: Not the best war movie, but great character study
Review: It may be treasonous to suggest that Patton is a flawed WW2 movie, although it is leaps and bounds the best character study ever developed inside a war movie. Not for nothing was this Nixon's favorite flick. George C. Scott justly deserved an Oscar for his portrayal of the hugely idiosyncratic Patton. I was 14 when I first saw it, and it was a real eye-opener for someone who (growing up in the military) thought all Army generals were bland smiley Eisenhower clones.

Scott's Patton is sensational, and manipulates the audience into a genuine love-hate relationship with the man. He was a tyrant, but soft-skinned. He was a brilliant tactician who was respected above all others by the Germans. He was also a mean, petty, competitive SOB who could waste soldier's lives to feed his ego, and with primitive political sensibilities - kind of an American Arik Sharon.

Flaws? Well... the movie certainly blitzes through WW2 history. Near the end of the film, the flim shows Patton's troopers rescuing the surrounded 101st Airborne at Bastogne (December 1944), and suddenly, it's May 1945. This skips over perhaps Patton's worst moment, when in 1945 he ordered a small task force to penetrate far behind German lines to attempt a rescue of his son-in law languishing in a POW camp (he was captured during the Kassarine Pass battles). The mission was a dramatic and costly failure.

I did have problems with the other significant generals portrayed in the movie. Montgomery was pompous, but he did pull the British through in North Africa. In Patton, he has few redeeming features. Karl Maulden's Omar Bradley is just too nice for a four-star general - probably because the real Bradley served as a technical consultant for the movie, which must have stirred interesting emotions in the man. The real Bradley experienced a real love-hate relationship with the flashy, tempermental Patton.

The biggest flaw in Patton is technical. Like the earlier film, "Battle of the Bulge", American tankers drive 1950's tanks (Chafees?), and the Germans get bigger American tanks. (In unlikely movies like Kelly's Heroes, they used real Shermans). This is way before "Private Ryan", so the battle scenes are dramatic enough but do not have the punch of recent movies.

The real reason for "Patton" is the man, not the battles. In this, the movie surpasses "MacArthur" and similar biopics. And this definitely has the best music score of any war movie. So maybe it gets a "five" after all.

Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest war biographies ever filmed
Review: George C. Scott gives the finest performance of his career has the fabled World War 2 general. The movie follows Patton's career from the North Africa Campaign to the end of the war. Jerry Goldsmith's excellent soundtrack really makes the film what it is. The film is also humorous. Patton always has to be criticized for something (Slapping a soldier, criticizing the Russians, e.t.c). Patton believes in reincarnation; thinking that he was a soldier in past lives. In one scene, where Patton and Omar Bradley (Karl Malden) are at an ancient Greek battlefield, when Patton describes the battle he says, "I was there".

This is definitely one war movie (or any kind of movie) I would not mind watching over and over again.

Rating:
Summary: The best and last epic american film ever made
Review: To say in few words: Patton is the most genuine state of epic spirit you feel since the first images. The supeb visual impact you receive when Patton gives his speech with the american flag behind him still remain in our memory.
What can we add underlying the superb performing of George C. Scott? . More than an actor, Scott was a model. You feel Patton and forget half an hour after to Scott, because he melts with the character and disappears before us, in a mesmerizing way that you could compare without any effort to Marlon Brando.
Franklin Schaffner was a talented director. Imagine the caleidoscopic twist that means going from The planet of the apes to Patton and ending with Nicholas and Alexandra.
The camera{s handling , the brilliant sequences of the desert{s battle, the insights of the General are described and supported by a genial script.
There's a worthy point which deserves to mention: the reflections of Patton when he's in the battlefield remembering that somehow he was there sometime, and remind the echoes of the greeks who fought centuries ago. It's a powerful metaphor but told with such kind of force that you remind to Alejandro Magno and Achilles with making use of the emotive memories.
What happened then after this movie?
Patton is an emblematic personality the hero{s essence encarnated in the middle of the XX century.
The epic sense reachs his goals through the great triumphs, the innovative strategies, that only you can establish another brilliant soldier who was Mc Arthur in the other side of the world.
I{m sure that Moshe Dayan understood the essence of this General since his student days. I haven't seen any interview in this sense but somehow in my mind and in my spirit tells me that I'm right.

Rating:
Summary: GREATEST WAR FILM EVER MADE
Review: In 1970, two films juxtaposed each other. "Patton" was an unlikely winner of eight Oscars. The pacifist Scott for all practical purposes took his Buck Turgidson character and refined him into the real-life Patton. In interviews, Scott said he found his research of Patton revealed an unbalanced man, but on screen Scott nailed him as the vainglorious, brilliant, driven warmonger he was. Steiger was offered the role first but turned it down because it glorified war. Vietnam was absolutely at its apex. It was very surprising that Hollywood would make such a film at that time. But director Frankin Schaffner had served under Patton, and after making "The Planet of the Apes" had the clout to call his shots. The film did not get America behind the war, but it did cause Nixon to start bombing Cambodia because the Patton story convinced him to get tough. The screenwriter, oddly enough, was Francis Ford Coppola, who may have done himself a turn. Coppola was no war lover, and wrote "Patton" as a man obsessed with war ("God help me, I love it so"), deluded by visions of Napoleonic grandeur mixed with Episcopalian Christianity and karmic reincarnation. The intent may have been to show a psychotic military man, to de-mask his heroism, and this may have been what prompted Scott to play it. From page to screen there are virtually no changes, but if Coppola was trying to put down the military by showing Patton's human warts, the result was a brilliant work that now is one of, if not the most, conservative pictures ever made. Watching "Patton" stirs wonderful pride in two countries (Great Britain is prominent in the film) that were tough enough to stand up to the Nazis when the rest of the world cowered in victimhood. Karl Malden's Omar Bradley is Patton's perfect foil, as is the Bernard Law Montgomery character. The film saved Coppola, who was about to be fired as "The Godfather" director. When he won the Oscar for "Patton", it gave him too much clout to get the axe.

(...)

Rating:
Summary: WORTH SEEING JUST FOR THE OPENING SPEECH
Review: In this post-9/11 world everyone should see this film if only to see and hear the famous speech Patton gave to his troops, opening the film. He starts out by saying that no one ever won a war by dying for his country. One wins a war by getting the guy on the other side to die for HIS (other) country. The Islamic terrorist plaguing the world today all say they want to die. Patton would say that he is glad to oblige them.

Just a warning, don't expect to learn anything about the conduct of the Second World War from this film. It is first and formost a character study of Patton, the man, and I can't praise George C. Scott enough for his stupendous performance. It is rare in history that an actor adapts so well to the role he is playing.

Rating:
Summary: great biopic
Review: What you have here is one of the better movies ever made, and certainly one of George C. Scott's greatest (though his greatest is still Dr. Strangelove). It is a well written, well shot, well directed (this is the man who made Planet of the Apes) film that won a great many awards. There are some great action sequences and some fine acting moments.

The dvd is a little weak. There are a few trailers: Tora Tora Tora and The Longest Day, which are good choices and and audio essay, but it never played on my dvd. I don't know if that is just my copy or a flaw in them all. And that's it. No featurettes, documentaries, nothing else. A film this great deserves a little more care in packaging the dvd.

Rating:
Summary: Incredible!
Review: After watching Patton I have come to the conclusion that there has never been a war movie quite like it. It is not just a war movie, but also an extraordinary character study. 20th Century Fox came up with a "mixed bag" of terrific movie talents(Frank Schaffner, Frank McCarthy, Francis Ford Coppola, to name a few) for this film, and each contributed their skills, but none of them contributed more than George C. Scott. His electrifying, believable performance in the title role was, in my opinion, the greatest I have ever seen in any film. Karl Malden was cast as General Omar Bradley, and he doesn't disappoint either. Although his performance wasn't nearly as good as Scott's, he does quite good as Patton's character foil; quiet and more cautious. The DVD presents Patton with style; Jerry Goldsmith's musical score is still first-rate, and the scenery(with the help of the Dimension-150 camera)is something to behold. If you get the two-disk edition, however, it has a documentary with interviews on people involved in the movie. Do yourself a favor and fast-forward through the interview with Oliver Stone. He's got better things to say than what he says in the documentary. All in all, Patton is a one-of-a-kind war epic that was certainly worthy of the eight Academy Awards it won. Incredible!