THE PATRIOT

      In 1763, the nine -year French and India War ends, leaving Britain in control of Canada and all the territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. In many ways, the survivors of this long war, the settlers who live on and fought for the land, have stronger ties to it and to each other than to Britain. After years of warfare, these hardy men and women, who collectively make up Great Britain´s thirteen colonies in the New World, are ready to return to their ordinary lives in the burgeoning new cities and the countryside.
      Benjamin Martin is one of these men. A wily and ferocious effective warrior, he leaves his brutality behind him and goes back to his home in South Carolina. He marries a fine woman who bears him seven children and, under her influence, he traces his violent past for a peaceful future on his sprawling plantation., but his life is inexorably altered by the Revolution.
      His wife has died in childbirth, leaving him responsible for his brood of children. Tragedy and the sins of his past have transformed him. The horrors of combat haunt him still and the savage acts that won him the admiration of his comrades in the previous war gnaw at his conscience.
      His oldest son, Gabriel, has no such doubts. In defiance of his father, he joins the fight and inadvertently brings conflict right to his family´s doorstep.
      Benjamin is swept into the American revolution when the war reaches his farm and the British endanger all that he holds most dear. Taking up arms alongside his idealistic patriot son, Gabriel, he leads a rebel American militia into battle against the relentless Redcoat army. In the process, he discovers that the only way to protect his family is to fight for the young nation´s freedom.