All Critics (48)
|
Top Critics (16)
|
Fresh (47)
|
Rotten (10)
|
DVD (41)
Braveheart looks like a true epic -- even if it is both bloody and bloody long.
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.
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.
As a filmmaker, [Gibson] lacks the epic gift, but the movie, scripted by Randall (no relation) Wallace, works on a fairly basic level as a hiss-the-English medieval Western.
Braveheart opts to turn cowardly, settling for the magnification of Gibson's idol status, forfeiting the complex, more nebulous magnificence of the real Sir William Wallace and virtually excising the strategic brilliance of Robert The Bruce.
One of the most spectacular entertainments in years.
Mel Gibson's Oscared, bloody Scottish spectacle.
...a big, epic movie on a vast, epic scale, not only brutally violent but brutally long. It's worth it. (Blu-ray Edition)
A vanity project if ever there was one.
The 'special collector's edition' two-disc version provides a bunch of extras.
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.
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.
With a sweeping look, lots of emotion, a classic hero, occasionally corny dialogue and forced romances, Braveheart is a flawed classic.
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.
A massive, sweaty, frequently silly epic that nevertheless delivers enough brute pleasure to pass a rainy afternoon.
A great big splendorific Hollywood epic that's not exactly original or cliche-free, but fairly satisfying.
One of the weakest films to ever win the Best Picture Oscar, Mel Gibson's wannabe historical saga is handsome to look at but shallow and ultra-violent.
Gibson hews to a style that is visually elaborate without ever being visually complicated, scraping away the traces of any irony or dimension from every shot, every scene.
While the violence is raw, so are the emotions.
More Critic Reviews
Top Critic
