Flawed mediocrity

Rating: 5/10 (16 June 1999)

Had this film been set in a mythical land with fictional characters it wouldn't be too bad a film. But it has ideas, well above its station, about being a historical film, about being a film with a message. This turns an average good vs evil yarn into a bit of a joke. The trouble with real life is that it doesn't fit the Hollywood mould. So it gets bent out of shape. No film is completely historically accurate but Braveheart has a mass of cringingly bad mistakes. It gets his name right and puts some battles in and has him killed. The rest is fiction, almost nothing it right - from the blue paint that is supposed to be woad through to the romance with the English Queen and the siege of York, all wrong. It's a film that will annoy those who value history and still cling to the idea that modern films are capable of showing it. All this aside, it's not a bad film, just don't take it on the level it wants to be taken on and you'll be okay. History and what people want as history are two very different things and this film panders to all the worst fantasy, revisionist and nationalistic views on the past.
Good throw-away fun.