Braveheart (1995)

“The trouble with Scotland is it's full of Scots...”

I’ve seen this film a fair few times but not for many years, and certainly not since, well, Mel Gibson gained a reputation for ultra-conservative religious beliefs and films to match, and somewhat unfortunate comments about Jewish people. So it seems rather pointless for this Englishman to complain about this film being “anti-English”- given the subject matter, which is broadly true even if the chronology is somewhat compressed and William Wallace seems to be both suspiciously older and less upper class than he would have been. But these days it’s far more notable just how pious all the good guys are here.

Still, the film isn’t a bad melodrama and Gibson himself is rather good, and gets some equally good performance out of a cast without a huge amount of star wattage, although I’m kicking myself for not recognising Patrick McGoohan as King Edward I until now. The whole thing looks good and the battle scenes, so often dull and hard to follow, are genuinely dramatic and gripping.

It may play a few tricks with history- Edward I did not die at the same time as William Wallace was hung, drawn and quartered, and Robert the Bruce didn’t have much success until years later- but Braveheart is an entertaining and fun, if rather violent, Hollywood treatment of a somewhat neglected historical saga. Still watchable after all these years.