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Deep into the smoke-choked, blood-soaked Revolutionary War spectacle that is The Patriot, there arrives a pivotal sequence that would seem to mark the start of its third act — the act in which any sort of pussyfooting must always give way to payback. Militia leader Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson), a widowed father of seven, has just entered the enemy's fort under a white flag to cut a gentlemanly deal with Lord General Cornwallis (Tom Wilkinson), commander of the British forces in the South.

On his way out of the compound, however, Martin encounters the dastardly Colonel Tavington (Jason Isaacs), who has already killed someone Martin held dear, and who threatens he'll do worse. The British soldier tries to provoke a rash attack by taunting him with a reminder of that murder. Instead, with the incensed sincerity of a man who's been crawling on psychic broken glass, Martin quietly replies: ''Before this war is over, I'm going to kill you.''

That's all the promise an audience needs. Who would hesitate to bet a year of free popcorn refills that the new Independence Day extravaganza by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, the makers of Independence Day (from a script by Saving Private Ryan's Oscar-nominated Robert Rodat) will fulfill that pledge? Yet what happens next helps explain the difference between this film and a less passionately rendered piece of work.

''You have to remember, Tavington thinks he's going to win the war,'' says Isaacs, 36, a stage-seasoned Brit. ''I went to [the filmmakers] and said, 'This guy doesn't cower from anybody. The villain can't be scared of the hero halfway through the movie.' And they're so secure in their storytelling abilities that they said, 'You're right, let's do something else.'''

As the conspirators cooked up Tavington's response, they decided not to alert the movie's star. ''Mel's happy to improvise, throw things back and forth,'' says Isaacs. ''He's alive, he's liquid, his nerve endings are open.'' Martin's vow was to be the scene's last line. But when Isaacs shot back with ''Why wait?'' Gibson turned, his sky-blue eyes revealing wrath throttling down to restraint. Halting inches from his adversary's face, he uttered just a single word: ''Soon.''

One reason studios don't flinch at paying Gibson $25 million, the richest fee of any actor, is such inventiveness. Adding a glimmer of madness, as he's consistently done with his portrayal of Los Angeles detective Martin Riggs in the Lethal Weaponseries, has only drawn audiences closer to him. And that quality is precisely what The Patriot, a film whose magnetism for controversies was apparent even in its formative stages, needed. With Gibson on board, for example, Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group vice chairman Gareth Wigan finally had turnstile insurance for a two-hour-and-40-minute movie that seemed likely to draw an R rating for its violence. ''We knew it was a film about a man with a dark secret, and could [be rated R],'' Wigan says. ''This is a film like Saving Private Ryan and Braveheart — each in its separate way is about violence. I think if you try to do that and PG-13 it, you may end up pleasing nobody.'' Yes, Wigan says, July 4 is a family holiday, ''but R-rated films have opened on Christmas Day.''


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