Braveheart: Critic Reviews

It takes a real star to make suffering this sexy.

One of the most spectacular entertainments in years.

Though lumpy and even redundant, Braveheart constantly rebounds on some bold note.

[Gibson] has created a completely adequate modern facsimile of the classic romantic epic.

A rambling disappointment.

An action epic with the spirit of the Hollywood swordplay classics and the grungy ferocity of The Road Warrior.

A huge, bloody and sprawling epic, Braveheart is the sort of massive vanity piece that would be easy to disparage if it didn't essentially deliver.

Braveheart opts to turn cowardly, settling for the magnification of Gibson's idol status, forfeiting the complex, more nebulous magnificence of the real Sir William Wallace and virtually excising the strategic brilliance of Robert The Bruce.

Gibson's raw energy and storytelling power in Braveheart are undeniable. If the film doesn't meet his ambitions, it's because he set the bar so high.

There's a matter-of-fact grittiness about Braveheart that infects even its occasional touches of mysticism and photogenic romance.

With its clashing armies, heartstopping action, and grand sense of romance, this is the sort of film it's a pleasure to see and review.

Everybody knows that a non-blubbering clause is standard in all movie stars' contracts. Too bad there isn't one banning self-indulgence when they direct.

Though the film dawdles a bit with the shimmery, dappled love stuff involving Wallace with a Scottish peasant and a French princess, the action will pin you to your seat.

As a filmmaker, [Gibson] lacks the epic gift, but the movie, scripted by Randall (no relation) Wallace, works on a fairly basic level as a hiss-the-English medieval Western.

Mel Gibson's Oscared, bloody Scottish spectacle.

A vanity project if ever there was one.

A real modern epic.

Braveheart looks like a true epic -- even if it is both bloody and bloody long.

So inspiring is his message that my own girlfriend channeled it, in the warning I received prior to my reviewing the film: You'd better love it, or I'll disembowel you.

With a sweeping look, lots of emotion, a classic hero, occasionally corny dialogue and forced romances, Braveheart is a flawed classic.

At the heart of Mel Gibson's tumultuously entertaining epic is the almost-quaint notion that movie heroics should mean something more than a play for the much-coveted 18-25 box office demographic.

A massive, sweaty, frequently silly epic that nevertheless delivers enough brute pleasure to pass a rainy afternoon.

A great big splendorific Hollywood epic that's not exactly original or cliche-free, but fairly satisfying.

Pure hokum.

One of the weakest historical epics to ever win Best Picture, Mel Gibson's bloody thirteenth-centure saga was only a moderate success in the U.S., though performed better internationally.