Review of Braveheart (1995) by Dawdlingpoet — 23 Nov 2021

Surprisingly, I'd never actually seen this film before. I say that as a Scottish person born and bred, who was in secondary school when this film was released and I clearly remember the criticism it got (I wasn't keen on historical films at the time). I can certainly understand the criticism - I admit one of my first thoughts on watching the start of this film was 'ugh, the accents are all wrong! their slaughtering our language, never mind the bloody violence(!)'. There are some good special effects and the battle scenes are undeniably somewhat intense - fairly gripping I guess but I would say it did feel a bit unnecessarily over the top. I realise how this will sound and I realise such battles were undoubtedly brutal and gory but the way its depicted, how and when cameras focus on certain injuries, it just felt slightly over the top. I'm ok with most horror films too but obviously this is a film supposedly, if but loosely, based on fact and my initial reaction was that the most intense violent scenes felt somehow a little exploitative perhaps? I'm not sure. On the other hand, I felt it was a little too uncomfortably sentimental at the start. So, yes, this is a bit of a somewhat cheesy film of extremes but I can't say I entirely hated watching it, so I can't give it too low a rate, nor too high one.

Also there's an issue with realism or accuracy in as much as the main character (and most others) having apparently bright shiny (very clean) teeth and so on, which surely wouldn't have been the case. Its a little thing but I thought it was quite noticeable. Plus, going back to the battle scenes, I also thought it was surprising how little blood appeared to have been spilled on the land, following said battles, when we're shown people leaving the area...it just didn't seem entirely, well, credible and that's ignoring the whole elephant in the room of an Australian being Scottish(!).

If your interested in this in terms of an entertaining watch of a film then yes, I'd cautiously recommend it - its certainly far from perfect but it is still reasonably gripping. I suppose I wouldn't especially recommend it in terms of being fully historically accurate, no but thats not all that matters in a film.