Crude and Inaccurate

Rating: 5/10 (11 March 2005)

This film is thoroughly overrated. i saw it when it first came out and have never liked it. I shan't spend much time on it, but there are a few key issues that I think seriously hurt this film.
It is violent in an unnecessary, and exceedingly crude manner that adds nothing of value to the film. It is not artistic and serves no valid purpose. I have no problem with violence, even graphic violence, per se, but it should be done artistically or at least serve some purpose. Good examples are Saving Private Ryan, which was, needless to say, exceedingly graphic and disturbing, but there was a strong point to it all. Similarly, Reservoir Dogs had much violence, but it was well done and had an artistic purpose. The Wild Bunch is another example of violence that serves artistic purposes and is used to make valid points. Here, the violence has none of that and it is simply off-putting.
Another serious problem is the extreme license that Mel and the others take with history. I don't expect films to be totally truthful or accurate with history and facts, but there is a limit and this goes far beyond that limit. With some of his films, Mel certainly seems to be on an anti-English (here) or anti-British (elsewhere) crusade and he takes it to unrealistic and unfounded levels. There is also too much nationalism/patriotism here in a way that is anachronistic for the time, even allowing for natural sentiments against invaders or assuming that a nascent nationalism was in fact arising in the British Isles at the time. Moreover, the events themselves and the portrayal of the characters (like Edward I as some sort of Hitler/Stalin-type) are often very inaccurate. He portrays the English as Nazi-like sadists while failing at the same time to reflect the fact that people in general (not just invading English) back then tended to be a little freer with human life, etc., so that torture or execution, while perhaps angering people, was not exactly an unusually barbaric thing at the time. To top it off, the whole thing between Wallace and the princess Isabelle, with the film claiming that Edward II's offspring (presumably the future Edward III) was in fact Wallace's son, is absurd. There is simply no legitimate reason for any of this.