Director: Mel Gibson
Starring: Mel Gibson, Sophie Marceau, Patrick McGoohan, Angus MacFadyen, Brendan Gleeson, Sean Lawlor, James Cosmo, Catherine McCormack, Tommy Flanagan, Rupert Vansittart

- Reviewed by Tom

Mel Gibson directed and starred in Braveheart playing William Wallace, a 13th-century warrior who won the freedom of Scotland from the British through many bloody battles. King Edward 'Longshanks' of the British empire was trying to take over Scotland and take away all the freedom of the Scottish citizens. The story in the movie follows the true historical story as best it can (of course there is the Hollywood enhancements in there!). [See a nice little summary of the history.]

The movie probably has some of the most intense battle scenes ever filmed. Sure Private Ryan had an intense 20 minutes, but the Braveheart battles go on throughout the whole movie. The battles are so extremely messy with flying body parts, arrow-pierced buttocks, chopped heads, and back stabbing that it is almost funny! Sure, Gladiator had some good sloppy battles also, but I would have to give the award to Braveheart. (In between the battles in Gladiator I found myself squirming and restless from all the Roman/Klingon-ish talk about death with glory, honor...blah blah blah...and found myself getting lost in the plot. Braveheart does a much better job at keeping interest in between the battles.)

When I really like movies, I tend to break the pie up into more detail:

• 1 slice—Mel Gibson. He is awesome no matter what he does!
• 1 slice—Directed by Mel. I don't know how many movies he has directed, but he did a good job in this one.
• 3 slices—THE BATTLE SCENES!!!!
• 1 slice—The storyline kept me interested for the full 2.6 hours.
• 2 slices—The DVD extras on the 2-disc Special Collector's Edition, which include: a 3-part, 50 minute documentary on how the movie was made; a very interesting commentary by Mel talking about each scene and giving lots of details about the making of the movie; a photo montage of stills from the movie and the set; an interview with screenwriter Randall Wallace; plus a featurette called "Tales of William Wallace" that gives some history of the real William Wallace, drawn-and-quartered and all.

Some interesting facts:

• Mel actually hung himself into unconsciousness in the last scene.

• The 2,000 extras in the battles were actually soldiers from the nearby army base.

• The horses that were stabbed and flipped over on their backs were actually fake models.

• The "quartering" scene in the end was actually more graphic in the original cut, but was edited out.

This Special Collector's Edition meets my high standards as a movie that I would actually buy for my DVD collection!

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