Review of Braveheart (1995) by Ahmed A — 04 Oct 2018

From its soulful score by James Horner, brilliant editing in the battle sequences, brisk pacing, and dazzling cinematography by John Toll, Braveheart is an epic in every sense of the word.

The acting, the surprisingly brutal battle scenes, the speeches and monologues, etc, feels fresh and new to the genre even if they actually aren't. That's in large part due to Mel Gibson's remarkable and risk-taking direction, and the masterful editing.

Long shots, wide camera angles, and quick cuts in the dialogue scenes as well as the battle sequences gave this movie a lively atmosphere, and therefore made it a unique experience that helped it to stand out from the other historical epic movies.

That being said, I found the tonal shifts completely outputting. The movie kept moving from a somber to a lighter tone throughout its runtime to match the current situations and events. That made some important moments have less impact on me, such as; some dramatic moments didn't work as mush as it should, the climax of the plot felt sudden and not well prepared for it, etc. While it didn't take me a long time to adapt to the new tone, the episodic nature of the movie is quite annoying and distracting.

The romantic relationship between Wallace and his wife was pretty fine and acceptable at first, but then it overstayed its welcome a little bit. Whilst the reason for that is quite understandable, I couldn't help but cringe for a while.

The villain is very menacing and almost everything about him is great, except that he provided us with an exposition of his plans many times. But, fortunately, likewise some cheesy lines, these scenes were justified by Gibson's excellent direction that gave them an epic sense, and therefore made them more passable.

Randall Wallace's screenplay is more than enough to make the movie match its ambition. From the way we witness our protagonist from his childhood to become the hero he is, to the miraculous narrative control on the abundance of side characters and their sub-plots. All that made Braveheart a larger-than-life historical tale, and I don't care about how historically accurate it is because it's a great movie!

(8/10).