Clichée-Alert!

Rating: 1/10 (6 March 2007)

Oh my...what a film! Today I saw it for the first time, although I really love films about the middle-ages. I like them, because they can serve as some entertaining lessons in history and in general they offer a lot of action. But somehow in the last 10 years I never made an attempt to watch "Braveheart". Why? I don't know, but it hast to be have been my instinct for good films. This movie full fills one thing, it hast some good action scenes, and yes, the costumes are fine too...but that's hardly all about this film. Now, from what I read about William Wallace and the historical background, this film is absolute nonsense. So, no entertaining history lesson...maybe in parts entertaining, but never a lesson...it's more like a fictional story about a superhero. Everything about Wallace in this movie is just great. He's the most civilized person in this movie (maybe in the whole world), he's so very just and noble...and his enemies are simply the contrary. Everything in this movie is just so over-the-top-cliché-based it's hard to sit through this movie....there's hardly any believable character in this film. Just some examples that made me really mad, because of the 100% Hollywood-Conventions: How does it come that the french princess falls immediately in love with a man she only heard about?! That's pure Hollywood-Trash! Of course she gets pregnant from Wallace's first try... Of course Wallace's enemy Edward dies only a few minutes after Wallace himself...so there seems to be a heavenly justice. Of course Wallace's last word shouted out, just before he dies is "freeeeeeedom", yeah... "freedom" that's a good Hollywood-message! Now that I saw the film it even reminded me at "Passion of Christ", which I think is a great film, but knowing that Gibson made Braveheart 10 years before it seems to me as if should have been the Beta-Version of Passion". He leads his people, you see him crucified, he is a martyr and in the moment he dies, his fellows just watch him, and are not willing to die with him for their thing. I watched "Joan of Arc" some days ago, and that was a really great intelligent and entertaining film, that is much better than this one... for me it's unbelievable that Braveheart ranks among the best films of all times... incredible.