Lethal Braveheart Mel--in Knickers and a wig...

Rating: Null/10 (9 July 2000)

This is really quite good--a def. improvement on Emmerich/Devlin's last opus, Godzilla. That one was kinda poopoo. Here, they take trad. flag waving war films of the 50s, mix in a good miniseries feel(the families, character bits, etc, length), Mel's patented Lethal Braveheart moves, and tossed in big production values.
Quite flag wavy, hokey in places, sure--but you have to love it, plus the fact that it was based on a real guy makes it even better. Gibson was fine, solid as always. Got a big kick half ways through the film when it finally dawned on me who the baddie was-kept on asking Who Is that Guy? over and over. It's 'Dr Ronald Quincy from Research, pretty much the smartest guy on the planet-you may wanna listen to him'-from Armageddon!! Boys does he pull it off too, does a great job, in a role that in the olden days woulda gone to either Henry Daniell or George Sanders. We hate him, we root for Mel to get him. Simple as that.
Now, am sure this isn't exactly a documentary, the ghost was prob. as flawed a guy as Ethan Allen or Yassir Arafat for all I know. He killed for a living, at least as presented. Big deal. This is a Movie. Remember that first and foremost.Here you can put away the ugliness of real life and sink into a Hollywoodized Rev. War depiction that actually gets it right more often than not for a change.
I admire Emmerich for including the random acts of brutality and violence from both sides, so they can actually show what the Rev. War actually looked like. It wasn't just guys in red, all in a line, firing their muskets at guys in blue-with wigs and drums and pipes, it was also blood, decapitations, killed POWs, disease, fires, slaughtered innocents.
Devlin and co have put a good chunk of that into this, and for that you are better served.
I would give this *** outta ****-too long in places, somewhat over-mindful of 'Last of the Mohicans' or 'Braveheart' in others, kinda hokey-but over all, its the kind of flick that oughta be done more often by Hollywood.
Go see it.