Rebel Mel

Braveheart (1995):
What’s It About?: After an English Lord kills his wife, Scotsman William Wallace (Mel Gibson) tries to band together his fellow countrymen to fight against English rule. But not only is the king determined to bring him down, so are several Scottish noblemen as well.
How Good Is It?: It’s not overly exceptional, but it is good. It’s biggest asset are absolutely stirring battle sequences, which are amazingly choreographed in their ability to place you right in the middle of the battle, and give you an overview of it at the same time. The rest of the film, though didn’t have as much. Yes, there are some emotional moments, but nothing that would place it above any other movie of similar subject matter. The acting is good across the board, and the production values are also pretty excellent. It’s a good movie, most certainly, and its very capably done. But it’s not really all that exceptional. I should also point out that it suffers from being a smidgeon too long and a whole lot too violent. The tragedy of war is one thing, but there are scenes that really just made me think Mel was trying to shock me, rather than make upset me with brutality.
Was it Best Picture?: I guess. But only by default. Braveheart may not stand as a true classic, but neither would Babe or Apollo 13, the two other front runners. Again, it’s a good movie, but it probably wouldn’t even have been in the top three contenders of last year’s race.

Comments

[Adam Fiedler]

Okay, granted, not a stellar film. The violence, on the other hand, was a central point in the plot, as the atrocities serve to show the viewer not only just how corrupt and immoral society was at the time, but also to move the audience to sympathize with a more aggravated righteousness, in that, at the time, some times the only way to fight fire was with napalm (so to speak).
My only real qualm with the movie was Mel's insistence in playing a 20 something man (during his return) while quite obviously he was (a quite haggard) 39 year old. For pete's sake, I've seen prostestics to make people younger. Sink a few bucks into that!
At any rate, take some pepto with your popcorn, and stop whining about violence. There are far worse acts of brutality being perpetrated at this very moment by our own government you could be going on about, but I love ya, so I'll stop there.