The trouble with "The Patriot" is that it distorts history, partly to make the "good guys" more PC, and partly to make the "bad guys" look bad without any regard to accuracy.
For instance, Francis Marion was a slaveowner, but you can't make a movie in 1999 with a "good guy" owning slaves, because that automatically makes him a "bad guy". (Disclaimer: I'm no expert in the analysis of PC groupthink.) So they make a fictional character that does not own slaves, although he does use colored help. Go figger.
Meanwhile, Col. Tavington, who is substituted for the real-life Banastre Tarleton, mostly does the same things, but with a couple of notable exceptions. Tarleton burned churches, and he burned houses with people inside, but never, as far as we know, a church with people inside. You may be sure that if that had happened, we would know about it. Tarleton's excesses were talked about everywhere, even preached about, and they were a major reason that South Carolina, which started the war with a large Tory base, turned fiercely Whig and chased Cornwallis northward with nothing to show for his time here.
The other difference I was thinking of between Tarleton and Tavington is that Tarleton didn't die in the war. Of course, in a movie the "bad guy" has to die; he can't survive, go home to Liverpool to a hero's welcome, get a seat in Parliament and live to be 78.
It's actually a good thing real life is not like the movies.
PC or not, Marion - the “Swamp Fox - was a fantastic military leader!