8. The Patriot
Columbia PicturesRoland Emmerich's historical (ahem!) war film starring Mel Gibson and Heath Ledger takes the real-life events of the American Revolutionary War as its subject matter - it's a grand and epic production with a cast of thousands of extras, sweeping in its use of emotions and - predictably - light on historical accuracy. There wasn't a critic at the time who didn't spot the glaring inaccuracies from the start, and some of them realised quickly that evaluating in terms of its faithfulness to what actually happened would be a pointless exercise. It seems that Emmerich and his collaborators spent plenty of time at the Smithsonian Institute ensuring that the weaponry, costumes and sets were all as accurate as possible but forgot to pick up a history book before writing the script - the result was a reduction of anything resembling actual events being reduced to pure fiction, most egregiously in its depiction of atrocities which never actually happened. Still, if you want a good villain in a movie then you have to make the audience hate them, so a few "white lies" are to be expected. Screenwriter Robert Rodat is no stranger to twisting the truth - his script for Saving Private Ryan conveniently omitted the role of the Allies in the D-Day beach landings, turning it into an all-American fare.