Braveheart (1995)

"Freedom!" -- William Wallace's last word.

Good movie? Great movie?

Right now, I'm leaning more towards "good movie," but it did win Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture and three other categories, so that would indicate it should be a little bit better than just good. 

Checking in on Ebert's original rating, he gave it 3.5/4 stars, and he never bumped it up to the "Great Movie" series. 

What does the movie lack? Well, it's historically inaccurate in a lot of ways. That doesn't bother me. Mel Gibson is also way too old for the part of William Wallace. That doesn't bother me either. 

At times the film comes across a little too melodramatic, a little too soap opera-y. Not over-the-top so, but enough so that it slightly bothers me. 

I also don't like not being able to follow the timeline. What's being captured in this film happens over at least a 15–20-year time period (and that's starting from when Wallace comes back to Scotland as an adult). As you watch, you get that some time passes, but you never really feel like it's a decade or more. It feels like it's all happening in, say, a year. You never see the seasons change. You never see Scotland in the winter, or the Scottish trying to feed themselves and live life as they battle the evil English for years and years. 

I mean, this is a 3-hour epic, so I understand that they can't "show everything," and I don't want them to. At the same time, when you watch a 3-hour epic like Doctor Zhivago, say, you know that "time passes" and not everything is happening in a single year. They should have been able to do a better job capturing that feeling in this movie, too. 

Entertaining to watch for sure. I did pay close attention to the battle scenes. Movies like this always have the real challenge (pre-CGI and AI) of making them feel epic and "real" -- hiring enough extras, using the proper camera angles, and staging the close-ups on specific fights. Overall, I was okay with how well Braveheart captures the battles, but some shots did make it feel puny, like they had 200 men representing 10,000, and that kind of thing. Not a big deal, but noticeable. 

Also, not a big fan of over-saturating the blue eyes, which they really do for Wallace from time-to-time. 

Rating: 4/5 stars