Braveheart (1995)

Academy Award Winner

If you are Scottish or just love yourself some haggis read this:

This is a film that swells with wailing bagpipes, epic battles, and lots of kilts. You will be shouting "Alba gu Brath!" or FREEEEEDOM!!!!! for days involuntarily. (Warning: stay away from public spaces)

If you are not Scottish start here:

This is a very overdone movie that just has way too much Mel Gibson all over it. He is not Orson Welles, he does not get to produce, director and star in a film unless he is good at it.  As a director he does not give us anything. The shots all fall flat to me, I see nothing in them of particular note beyond the fact that there is way too much slow motion. There are other ways, more artful and innovative ones at that,  to give emphasis than to slow everything down, and you need to use them especially in a movie that is three hours long.

His performance as a leading actor also leaves something to be desired. You can tell the script was attempting to depict a man with many faces. A warrior, a lover, a country man, a savage. But Gibson's William Wallace only seems capable of saying everything at one level of intensity. I feel we lost what could have been a complex, dynamic character to a mediocre performance.

The other actors were okay. There was nothing exceptional about the cinematography or the editing. I will mention that I enjoyed the score, but what can I say, I have Scottish and Irish blood in me.

What bothers me the most is the premise itself is a good story. It's the small rising against impossible odds for something they have never had: freedom. That is a great story, and when placed in a historical setting such as this one it has great potential as a period piece. It just was not executed in a way that was conducive to what it ultimately could have been.

Overall: Yes this movie is able to draw out pride in my heritage so it is not without the power to elicit emotion. However it could have been so much more than that had it not been for Mel Gibson. Perhaps someone should try it again sometime.