...a huge film with incredible action sequences, an emotional love story, and a few technical wonders... Braveheart remains a thrilling and entertaining epic

| Jun 27, 2023

The film is rich, multi-layered and lush.

| May 4, 2023

It's unclear when Mel Gibson became a combination of Sam Peckinpah and Akira Kurosawa, but there's no question that Braveheart is one of the best epic movies of the '90s... Scene after scene takes your breath away with its sometimes cruel beauty.

| Nov 18, 2022

In only his second film behind the camera, Gibson has crafted a historical epic, Braveheart, that stands tall among the biggest and the best: Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur, El Cid.

| Nov 18, 2022

Epic in length only and peppered with sniggering homophobia, the homage to Himself drags on for three hours going on three years.

| Nov 18, 2022

McGoohan is terrific; half-basilisk, half brass-rubbing. Nor does the film lack power to stir and move us.

| Nov 18, 2022

As he did with The Man Without a Face, Gibson takes his directorial chores so seriously that he squeezes the life out of the piece.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 18, 2022

Gibson puts us in the peculiar position of longing for him to die. Braveheart overstays its welcome. It's an epic looking not only for a point but an exit line.

| Nov 18, 2022

Braveheart is an astonishing spectacle of blood and heart, a virile and punishing epic, less interested in historical relevance than in grandiose myth-making.

| Original Score: A- | Nov 18, 2022

If Braveheart suffers from Gibson's vision and his excesses, it also accomplishes two things: It demonstrates the vast, faceless misery of war like no other movie of recent memory. And it answers the question: Just what do men wear under those kilts?

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 18, 2022

Braveheart doesn't amount to much more than theatrical chest-thumping by Gibson. He clearly knows how to put a movie together, but he is going to have to get over himself before that knowledge does anyone any good.

| Original Score: C+ | Nov 18, 2022

[Mel Gibson] really does put his heart into this blood-and-thunder saga, as both director and star. One result is real passion. A disastrous consequence is a self-indulgent running time.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 18, 2022

The bone-crunching chaos of a medieval melee has rarely been so effectively captured... That's pretty much the story on this three-hour epic -- riveting when it comes to battles and the camaraderie of fighting men, a bit shaky the rest of the time.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 18, 2022

With its earthy humanity, glorious landscapes and sweeping battles, Braveheart accomplishes what its makers intended: to tell a stirring story in a memorable fashion.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 18, 2022

It's Mel Gibson's movie all the way, and he comes through triumphantly.

| Nov 18, 2022

Powerful, confident and fiercely unapologetic about its movie-movie sensibility, Braveheart insists that escapism needn't be synonymous with mindlessness.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 18, 2022

Gibson, who directed and produced Braveheart, has transformed himself into a believable mercenary driven by revenge, passion and love.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 18, 2022

It’s an epic with clinches on battlefields more important than those in bedrooms or council halls. On that level, it works splendidly, if with brutal violence.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 18, 2022

[Braveheart] is stirring in ways that not too many movies are, and to a degree that not too many movies achieve. You fight it, but it wins.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 18, 2022

Gibson is solidly on course as a director, and likewise in his element as an actor, once he stops being Mel Gibson.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 18, 2022