epic!

Rating: 10/10 (1 January 2015)

e know Mel Gibson as one of the prettiest guys in Hollywood; who would have thought he was also one of the canniest? As director, star and producer of "Braveheart," he turns the unpromising story of a 13th-century kilted wonder into one of the most spectacular entertainments in years. The story of William Wallace, who led the Scots in a struggle for freedom from England's brutal rule, "Braveheart" evokes old- fashioned movie epics. Gibson's stroke of brilliance is to revel in those epic qualities - tragic romance and unbounded heroism, gorgeous photography and a cast of thousands - and add a swift contemporary kick.
"Braveheart" is also an explosive action movie. The logical comparison is not with the pallid "Rob Roy" but with a "Die Hard" film. The medieval Scots use spears, swords, axes and giant rocks, and they use them with a vengeance.
They get quite bloody in the process, too. At the start of the film, the child William (sweetly played by James Robinson, who looks remarkably like Gibson) wanders into a hut where his clansmen have gone to make peace with the English. The boy sees their bodies hanging from the rafters, establishing right away that this movie is about a savage time.
Despite that, the early episodes are more lyrical than brutal. Wallace is sent abroad to be educated, returns as Mel Gibson and falls in love with a beautiful woman named Murron (Catherine McCormack).
Wallace and Murron are married in secret to elude an English law allowing a nobleman to rape a Scottish bride on her wedding night. The romantic marriage ceremony, at night in a clearing in the woods, is so evocative of "Romeo and Juliet" that there must be trouble ahead.
Just enough of the typical Gibson persona shows through to make Wallace accessible and likable in modern terms. The love affair with Murron plays off the actor's heartthrob image. And there are flashes of irreverent wit, including a weirdly zany rock-throwing contest between Wallace and his loyal friend Hamish (Brendan Gleeson).
Wallace is a warrior with wit and a romantic soul. But when someone he loves is murdered by the English, he is capable of slitting the murderer's throat in revenge. From then on, "Braveheart" becomes a film of sly political treachery and extravagant, unrelenting battles.
Wallace marshals the Scots to fight against King Edward I, called Longshanks, who is played with delicious, coldblooded villainy by Patrick McGoohan. There is no over-the-top acting here: Longshanks casually pushes his son's homosexual lover out a window, as if he were shooing a fly.
In vast, perfectly orchestrated scenes, the English send hundreds of arrows raining on the Scots. They in turn charge at the English carrying pointed wooden poles, the better to impale them. Heads are bashed in; swords are run through bodies. "Where's Wallace?" one Englishman asks. Thunk. A rock lands on the Englishman's metal helmet.
A few elaborate set pieces stand out. Wallace rides his horse into the small bedchamber of a sleeping enemy, swats the man on the head with a ball and chain and leaps out a high window, still on the horse. They fall into the water below and safely swim away.
And before the Battle of Stirling, Wallace rides before hundreds of Scots and rouses them to action. If they fail to go forward, he says, one day they will look back with regret and be willing to give everything to reclaim that chance to fight for freedom.
It's as if Mad Max had wandered onto the stage as Henry V and offered his own humble St. Crispin's Day speech. The language doesn't measure up, but Gibson (underrated as Hamlet in the Franco Zeffirelli film) pulls it off.
Surely it's no coincidence that the war paint on his face is the same cornflower blue as his eyes and the sky. The film is art- directed to the hilt, with a combination of mud and grime and movie- star glamor.
"Braveheart" is not served well by small-scale snippets on television commercials, in which his battle cry of "Freedom!" sounds a little silly, or by still photographs that draw attention to Wallace's fake flowing hair. This film relies on its epic size, visually on the big screen and emotionally in the cumulative sweep of its heroic story.
At 2 hours 59 minutes, "Braveheart" doesn't need to be any longer. Even so, it zooms by a romance between Wallace and Princess Isabelle (Sophie Marceau), Longshanks's daughter-in-law, sent as an emissary to the Scots. There is a wham-bam quality to their story: they meet, they're in love, she's pregnant, she's gone. The affair is so truncated it seems ludicrous.
The film goes over the edge at the end, when Wallace is captured by the English and comes to seem like a wild-eyed zealot. And some viewers will surely balk at the movie's graphic, bloody violence.
But "Braveheart" is a great, ambitious gamble that pays off. In his second film as director (the first was the small, deft, sometimes mawkish "Man Without a Face") Gibson has come through with an exhilarating new-fashioned epic.