Customer Reviews

Patton (Widescreen)

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I am not always a fan of war films, but this is a really good exception and George C. Scott gives the performance of a lifetime of a highly controversial figure. Whether you end up liking or hating Patton, probably a mixture of the two, you can't help but admire some aspects of the man, just one of those guys you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of. The bonus material is really interesting and provides important background on the man, the myth and the legend. Money and time well spent.

The screen play is co-written by Francis Ford Coppola and Based upon the two books "Patton: Ordeal and Triumph" by Ladislas Farago and "A Soldier's Story" by General Oman N. Bradley. And acted by George C. Scott. This paints the picture of the Patton that we all know.

From the initial speech to the "I had a dream last Night" recounting of the Napoleon campaign, this film holds your attention. Patton is larger than life, and George C. Scott is larger than life in this larger than life movie.

We follow Patton through his WWII carrier. The focus is on Patton more than the war. We can feel with him as he remembers his past lives and we feel as though we were there with him. This is emphasized by revisiting Zama where Roman Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal. If you ever get a chance you need to look it up.

We know that very war is different but we learn from history, and Patton is history. By the way the film is just down right fun to watch.

He was a no bull, all guts general with a passion for war, for progress, and for history. And he used history to his advantage. No other World War II general had the personality of Patton. And no general since Patton has been able to match his flamboyant style. George C. Scott's potrayal is flawless. And the movie is a good history lesson for all of us who were, ahem, napping during that part of the lecture. I was not a fan of "old war movies" before I saw Patton. A child of the late 80s and 90s, I grew up with the special effects stuff such as, most notably, Saving Private Ryan. But it's Patton's personality that makes me like this movie. He makes you want to watch it. His attitude inspired men to move, to march. I think he could still inspire us all today.

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.

(...)

Great film, but not the product described by Amazon. I bought this because it is described as having German audio - turns out Amazon just walked over to Best Buy and mailed it to me.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!