Like most war movies, "The Patriot" has a divided spirit. On one hand, it must remind us of some universal banalities: War is a grotesque and brutal business, in which nobody really wins. On the other, it must lure us into the carnage as an eager, even bloodthirsty, cheering section, convincing us that the struggle it depicts -- in this case, the American Revolution -- although terrible, is ultimately righteous. This bait-and-switch is nothing new in war stories; you can find it from "The Red Badge of Courage" clear back to "The Iliad."

What's surprising about "The Patriot" -- a Hollywood agent's fantasy project, bringing together the star of "Braveheart," the director of "Independence Day" and the writer of "Saving Private Ryan" -- is how delicately it manages this balance between cautionary tale and berserker bloodlust. Yes, this is the kind of big, messy, flag-wavingly sentimental blockbuster you'd expect from director Roland Emmerich (whose other films include "Godzilla" and "Stargate"). But it has a slightly more sober spirit, a more composed atmosphere of beauty and tragedy, than Emmerich's manic earlier films, which typically give you no time to breathe, except during the platitudinous monologues.

Anchored by a gripping yet surprisingly vulnerable performance by Mel Gibson, as a family man who becomes the reluctant guerrilla hero of the war's southern front, "The Patriot" is majestic filmmaking, for all its flaws. As a compelling and immensely detailed portrait of life and death in a vastly different America, and a wrenching depiction of early modern warfare at its cruelest, it provides the American Revolution with the epic film it has long deserved. As a period piece on the nature of heroism, I imagine people will compare it to "Gladiator," but it's a better-written and less muddleheaded film, while nearly as grandiose.

Most moviegoers, I suppose, don't need to be sold on Gibson as a leading man. But for me, at least, the finely controlled emotion of his work here as Benjamin Martin is something of a revelation. Now a conspicuously middle-aged man with a furrowed visage and a thickening frame, Gibson makes a completely convincing South Carolina gentleman farmer who, despite his mysterious military past, only wants to gather his family close around him as the war clouds thicken over the American horizon. When Martin finally tells his eldest son Gabriel (Heath Ledger) the horrific story of his renowned heroism at Fort Wilderness, in the French and Indian War, there are no flashbacks, no sound effects, no upswellings in John Williams' score. Emmerich simply, and rather uncharacteristically, lets Gibson sit there and talk, and the echoes reverberate from one end of the film to the other.

Early on, Emmerich and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel illuminate the Martin farm with that shimmering, golden-moted harvest light that always signifies an antique era of contentment. It's 1776, and Gabriel, seduced by the swell of pro-independence propaganda, enlists in George Washington's Continental Army despite his father's halting, apologetic antiwar speech to the South Carolina Assembly. This war, Martin says, will be fought not on distant battlefields but among the colonists' farms and homes. "Our children," he warns, "will learn of it with their own eyes." When asked how he can square his refusal to fight with his patriotic principles, Martin answers, "I'm a parent. I haven't got the luxury of principles."

Of course we don't believe this for a second. Robert Rodat's screenplay virtually browbeats us into the understanding that Martin is both a man of principle and a man who has suffered greatly. Not only is he a widower -- somebody should compile a list of all the Hollywood movies in which a dead woman has been invoked to signify a man's depth of character -- but among his seven kids is a winsome toddler daughter who refuses to speak. (Memo to screenwriting students: Dead wife or disabled kid. Not both!) Add the history of Martin's conduct at Fort Wilderness, and Gibson's ponderous opening line, given in voice-over: "I have long feared that my sins would come back to visit me, and the cost is more than I can bear." It takes an awful lot of melodrama to live up to this buildup; Emmerich, Gibson and company just about provide it.

Those of us who have seen a movie before can guess about how long Martin's antiwar convictions will last; nobody's paying 8 or 9 bucks to see Mel sit at home in his spectacles and fret while his boys face the Redcoats' muskets. But Gibson's careful dignity, and the grace of Rodat's screenplay -- vastly superior to the normal Hollywood script-by-committee -- almost convince you that Martin really does wish this whole Revolution business would just go away.

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