Braveheart (1995)

USA
directed by: Mel Gibson
written by: Randall Wallace
starring: Mel Gibson, Angus Macfadyen, Brendan Gleeson, David O'Hara, Tommy Flanagan
seen 6th August, 2017

Through the whole screening I kept wondering: Do I think this is a good or a bad film? And I didn't find a definitive answer except that it's a bland one. I am thinking about it now, but by tomorrow or the day after tomorrow it will be gone from my mind and all will be well again.

Braveheart is insufferably long and goes into some spectacularly stupid soap opera details. Gibson said in one of his interviews that they had to make someone a good guy and someone a bad guy, to romanticize it a bit for the camera to handle the matter. And I am stating right here that camera can handle anything, if they only had the courage to not romanticize it. I am glad that they included a scene where we see people making a legend out of Wallace by manipulating the story with each telling. It would be even more swell if they could somehow voice the fact that they (the film-makers) are doing the same thing.

The film also seems to suffer by putting Mel Gibson (who was always too fanatical looking for my taste and seems too old for the way the character has been written) in the spotlight and keeping everybody else in shadows, with a few lines of dialogue and no screen presence of their own. That makes me sad because I find Brendan Gleeson, Tommy Flanagan and David O'Hara much more likeable and would like to see more of them. And there is nobody on the other side of the barricade to carry the film with his charisma. The actor portraying Edward. I seems too weak and fragile to be believably throwing people out of windows and imposing threat into hearts of men in general. The only one showing any potential is Angus Macfadyen, because he was born for crying and moral dilemmas, but thanks to the films overpopulation with so many characters he really has no proper space to shine.

Braveheart might have carried some kind of value in the time of its release, but I was four years old then and therefore can't evaluate it. Today the film seems worthless and rightfully placed amongst the worst to ever be awarded an Oscar.