Braveheart

With Braveheart, Mel Gibson firmly establishes that, besides being a charismatic actor, he is also a competent director who masters the film's big battle scenes. Naturally it is Gibson himself who plays Braveheart, the Scottish hero William Wallace, who roused the Scots to rebellion against the merciless King Edward I at the end of the 13th century. Wallace is a historical figure, but little is known about him. Braveheart has at any rate become a real heroic epic.

What makes the cup run over for the young Wallace is when his lovely wife Murron is executed after resisting an English soldier's attempted rape. Wallace tried to save her, but in vain. Scotland's peasants willingly follow the vengeful and resourceful Wallace, who wants to cast off England's yoke from his country, but the nobility, who squabble among themselves, are not so easily persuaded, for if they stay neutral, there is hard cash in the coffers as a reward from King Edward. Wallace does, however, get help from an unexpected quarter, namely from the heir to the throne's wife, the French princess Isabelle, who is drawn to Wallace's manliness and stubborn fight for freedom. Her own husband is a wimp who is not interested in women.

Braveheart is fairy-tale-like in its portrayal of a hero and his martyr's death, while the rainy Scottish settings and the lengthy battle scenes are different and surprisingly realistic. As far as I am concerned, Braveheart could well have been edited a little more tightly, and that does not apply only to the battle scenes.