If you haven’t seen it, Patriot is fabulous and clearly has little to no interest in portraying anything close to objective reality, but instead conveys a subjective experience with just enough jargon and cartoon-intuitively-correct techniques (eg “The Vantasner Danger Meridian”) to tether it down and give some genre structure to the real narrative (John’s emotional journey toward finding his own identity outside of his family and his work).
Even if one pressed play expecting Carre or The Wire, I imagine by the time the main character finds himself slow-motion dog-piled under 5 Brazilian jujitsu experts who are brothers and dress identically (after just such a scenario was lightly foreshadowed several scenes before), viewers might realize they’ve walked into something unexpected (and imo magical).
It’s not about the way things work — it’s about the way life feels.