Not Such A Brave-heart

Rating: 1/10 (15 April 2008)

watched Braveheart for the first time in many years recently and it's fair to say that I was genuinely surprised by how utterly and irredeemably bad this movie actually is. If you need reminding it won a whole host of Oscars way back in 1995 (including Best Picture).
I'm not a fan of Mel Gibson, not just because he hates me, but because he really doesn't float my boat in a dramatic sense. I think Braveheart is a really good film to highlight his chronic lack of on screen charisma and the notable absence of any real acting ability (that doesn't involve looking solemn or crazy). His performance in this movie is almost a parody, at points I felt like I was watching something from the people who made the likes of Date Movie etc. (which incidentally is probably a better movie than Braveheart!).
Mel's lack of charisma and ability are just two of the reasons I dislike this movie. There are however many other reasons. Firstly we are supposed to accept that it is perfectly fine for William Wallace to express indifference at the English occupation so long as his wife is with him. When wifey has her throat slit by an evil Englishman (more on them later) suddenly Wallace catches the highly infectious 'freedom at any cost' disease. He gets rival factions of Scottish tribes together and with no real chance of victory, he murders the English and drags his countrymen into a evidently and ultimately futile war in which thousands will perish and all to avenge the death of his wife; whose memory he abandons/desecrates half way through the movie when he sleeps with Princess Isabelle (who of course finds his ruggedness irresistible).
Wallace is portrayed first as an abject coward unwilling to oppose oppression and then as a selfish madman who gets off on butchering people with a large variety of obtusely shaped metal objects, and finally as a man-whore who can't keep his genitals concealed under his kilt for more than 5 minutes. And we are supposed to believe this man is a hero and that his acts are heroic? Come on!
Now I'm not really that fussy when it comes to historical inaccuracies in Hollywood movies; however I think artistic license is probably taken a little to far in this movie, particularly when every English character is represented as an inept, bloodthirsty, paganistic murderer and every Celt as a loyal, rugged, family orientated, God-fearing freedom fighter. Also Gibson, as director, seems to present, with the Prince Edward character, homosexuality as either a) a weakness or b) as being part of a type of madness. Seriously, this is straight from the Rambo textbook of social and geo-political representation. In other words; the complex Anglo-Celtic relationship is dumbed down so much that it becomes a laughable parody of a serious and interesting subject.
On a technical level Braveheart also falls foul of anything resembling a coherent narrative structure. As I have mentioned, Wallace's motivations are at the very least muddled, at worst incompressible. One event (usually a big battle or a shot of Mel's arse, or Mel stood on a mountain, or Mel holding a sword, or Mel giving a monologue about those pesky Jews, sorry English) leads to another with no real logical progression or explanation or fathomable reasoning. It's like watching a movie with every other scene missing.
Overall, I would love for someone to explain to me why they like this movie because I'm totally baffled as to why anyone would.