By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(June 28, 2000) -- As Mel Gibson sees it, The Patriot offers a compelling formula -- "The reluctant hero who's forced to take action.

"But I was also attracted to the ways it doesn't follow a formula," Gibson adds.

He points to the scene in which his character -- a South Carolina farmer -- is forced to recruit his two preteen sons to kill British soldiers who've just captured their older brother.

"Whoa! That's powerful, scary stuff that you don't see every day," Gibson says.

He's talking by phone from Manhattan, where he's just finished a round of morning TV talk shows. Though a huge star, Gibson recognizes the need to publicize his films -- and he does it tirelessly.

In The Patriot, the 44-year-old Gibson plays Benjamin Martin, a heroic veteran of the French and Indian War who's reluctant to fight again when the colonists rebel.

Martin is the widower father of seven children who believes his first responsibility is to his family. He doesn't take up arms until they're directly threatened.

Gibson admits he might have been drawn to the film specifically because he, too, is a father of seven.

"There's no getting around that," he says. "One uses one's own experience to portray the human condition in whatever way it can help you be truthful. I don't know specifically how it fit in, but I'm sure it did."

He denies, though, that he also connected with his youth, when he was one of 11 children of a New York Central Railroad brakeman.

Gibson's father pulled up stakes in Peekskill, Westchester County, in 1968, and moved his brood to Australia.

It's been suggested that Gibson's father opposed the then-raging Vietnam War and was protecting his children from the draft.

"But that's not quite truth. My father finished one job and wanted to start somewhere else. It wasn't an avoidance of Vietnam, anyway. We could still have been drafted in Australia -- but not till age 20, not 18."

At any rate, that's the reason the American-born Gibson first gained recognition as the Aussie star of the Mad Max movies, starting in 1979. Today, Gibson still carries dual citizenship and has homes in both countries.

His career reached a pinnacle when he won two Oscars in 1995, as director and producer of Braveheart, the saga of a reluctant Scot who also becomes a warrior-hero.

Since then, Gibson has continued to ride high as one of Hollywood's legitimate superstars -- and reportedly pulled down $25 million to carry a musket in The Patriot.

But is The Patriot merely Braveheart with the Stars and Stripes instead of kilts?

"They're really very different films," Gibson says. "There is the similarity of theme -- fighting for freedom from repression. But, beyond that, they depart.

"The Patriot is more personal, with its family aspects, and it has very different characters."

Gibson also learned a lot about the American Revolution while doing the film.

"I learned that it's a miracle that we gained independence. Our ragtag forces were outgunned and outmanned and outfinanced. Washington didn't win most of the battles -- it's just that his Continentals won the decisive battles, the ones that really mattered."

And, he adds, the Revolution also helped launch guerrilla warfare, with the shorthanded rebels firing from behind trees and bushes at the regulated ranks of very proper Redcoats.

As if it's not enough for Mel Gibson to win the American Revolution on screen this summer, he's also a quite different freedom fighter in Chicken Run. In truth, he's a rooster. And he's recruited to help hens escape Mrs. Tweedy's Chicken Farm.

Gibson says he did the voice work for the animated character "because I wanted to work with the Aardman Animation people. They're quality people."

Gibson says his kids are big fans of Aardman's Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit shorts, so being part of Aardman's first feature was "a lot of fun."

And, yes, Gibson hopes to direct again, though he hasn't been in charge behind the camera since Braveheart.

"I really want to direct again, but I don't know what," he says. "You're going to spend a few years of your life when you direct something, so you really have to want to do it. You have to commit to it.

"If you're just acting, you can move on to something else in just three months."

Gibson's next acting job -- which he's nearly completed -- is the lead in What Women Want, a romantic comedy from writer-director Nancy Meyers. His co-stars include Helen Hunt and Marisa Tomei.

"It's about a guy who discovers he can read women's minds," Gibson says. "That's a major male fantasy, isn't it?"