The Patriot (IIB): It's 1776 and the colonials are revolting: Mel Gibson (above) saves America (hey, he did a good job with Scotland) as Benjamin Martin, prompted to bloody revenge by the British habit of shooting small children in the back. Every hoary old cliche is here - from free blacks merrily volunteering to work on a South Carolina plantation, to a score by John Williams which is so thrusting, even George Lucas would nix it. Heath Ledger, as Gibson's oldest son, is a bright light in an otherwise trashy summer blockbuster directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Godzilla) with an eye towards jarringly violent interludes. As General Cornwallis, Tom Wilkinson is an amalgam of every foppish Brit you've ever seen on screen but Jason Isaacs, playing a psychopathic colonel, has surely wandered in from the set of The Silence Of The Lambs by mistake.