A fine portrayal of villainy, but the thinly disguised Major Tarleton was quite unfairly treated in a movie which is historically inaccurate even by Mel Gibson standards. He was a ruthless man who hated rebels, and there is no doubt about property damage and rapacious foraging, but the Continental military surgeon at Waxhaws stated that this, the only massacre under his command, occurred while he was trapped and semi-conscious under his horse, which had been shot immediately before or after the American commander's request to surrender. They copied the church incident from Oradour-sur-Glane in the Second World War.