Braveheart (1995)

All Critics (53) | Top Critics (19) | Fresh (52) | Rotten (10) | DVD (41)

In this mix of historical tragedy and hip adventure, Gibson may be as galvanic a movie swashbuckler as Errol Flynn and Burt Lancaster were in their day.

February 24, 2013 Full Review

Michael Wilmington

Chicago Tribune

Top Critic

The political argument that ensues is pretty dull, but the battle scenes are the loudest and most convincing in years: Gibson has learned from Kurosawa in lending a clarifying thrust to what is, essentially, chaos.

February 24, 2013 Full Review

Anthony Lane

New Yorker

Top Critic

Braveheart looks like a true epic -- even if it is both bloody and bloody long.

January 28, 2008 Full Review | Comment (1)

Jack Kroll

Newsweek

Top Critic

A huge, bloody and sprawling epic, Braveheart is the sort of massive vanity piece that would be easy to disparage if it didn't essentially deliver.

January 28, 2008 Full Review | Comment (1)

Brian Lowry

Variety

Top Critic

Pure hokum.

February 9, 2006 Full Review | Comments (20)

Geoff Andrew

Time Out

Top Critic

Though the film dawdles a bit with the shimmery, dappled love stuff involving Wallace with a Scottish peasant and a French princess, the action will pin you to your seat.

May 12, 2001

Peter Travers

Rolling Stone

Top Critic

If you like your Hollywood to be as big, stirring and spectacular as possible, then there's no denying that Braveheart was one of the highpoints of '90s cinema.

February 24, 2013 Full Review

Total Film

It succeeds in bringing to life the reality of Scottish patriotism and brilliantly captures the spirit of revolution.

February 24, 2013 Full Review

Thom Hutchinson

Radio Times

Completely honest, and completely eager, and subtle as an iron hammer to the skull.

June 25, 2012 Full Review | Comment (1)

Tim Brayton

Antagony & Ecstasy

Mel Gibson's Oscared, bloody Scottish spectacle.

December 14, 2010 Full Review | Comment (1)

Charles Cassady

Common Sense Media

...a big, epic movie on a vast, epic scale, not only brutally violent but brutally long. It's worth it. (Blu-ray Edition)

September 5, 2009 Full Review

John J. Puccio

Movie Metropolis

A vanity project if ever there was one.

March 1, 2008 Full Review | Comments (11)

Dennis Schwartz

Ozus' World Movie Reviews

A real modern epic.

February 20, 2008 Full Review

Film4

The 'special collector's edition' two-disc version provides a bunch of extras.

January 14, 2008 Full Review

Brian Webster

Apollo Guide

The only thing missing from this set is the preview for Gibson's next film: Dead Things I Beat with a Mace and Smear Across My Hairy Catholic Chest.

January 4, 2008 Full Review

Rob Humanick

Slant Magazine

So inspiring is his message that my own girlfriend channeled it, in the warning I received prior to my reviewing the film: You'd better love it, or I'll disembowel you.

January 4, 2008 Full Review | Comments (5)

Rob Humanick

Slant Magazine

With a sweeping look, lots of emotion, a classic hero, occasionally corny dialogue and forced romances, Braveheart is a flawed classic.

December 25, 2007 Full Review | Comments (2)

Ryan Cracknell

Movie Views

At the heart of Mel Gibson's tumultuously entertaining epic is the almost-quaint notion that movie heroics should mean something more than a play for the much-coveted 18-25 box office demographic.

February 10, 2007 Full Review

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie

Film Scouts

A massive, sweaty, frequently silly epic that nevertheless delivers enough brute pleasure to pass a rainy afternoon.

February 5, 2007 Full Review

TV Guide's Movie Guide

A great big splendorific Hollywood epic that's not exactly original or cliche-free, but fairly satisfying.

May 26, 2006 Full Review | Comment (1)

Jeffrey M. Anderson

Combustible Celluloid

• 1. William Wallace: I am William Wallace. And I see a whole army of my countrymen, here in defiance of tyranny! You have come to fight as free men. And free man you are! What will you do without freedom? Will you fight?!
  2. Young Soldier: No, we wil run and live!
  3. William Wallace: Yes!, Fight and you may die. Run and you will live at least awhile. And dying in your bed many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one cahnce, to come back here as young men and tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they will never take our freedom!
  – Submitted by Jackson B (5 months ago)
• 1. William Wallace: In the year of our Lord 1314, patriots of Scotland, starving and outnumbered, charged the fields of Bannockburn. They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen and they won their freedom. Forever!
  – Submitted by Alex K (5 months ago)
• 1. Stephen: I the most wanted man on my island, except I'm not on my island, of course.
  2. Hamish: Your island you mean ireland?
  3. Stephen: Yeah, it's mine.
  – Submitted by Brad S (5 months ago)
• 1. William Wallace: They may take away our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!
  – Submitted by Alex K (6 months ago)
• 1. William Wallace: Freedom!
  – Submitted by Alex K (8 months ago)
• 1. William Wallace: Freedom!
  – Submitted by Typhon Q (8 months ago)

There are no discussion threads for Braveheart yet.