_Braveheart_ reviewed by Cynthia Fuchs The title sounds like an Errol Flynn movie, one of those major studio-productions where hundreds of extras dressed in earth-tones thrashed around on battlefields, slamming heads and spurting viscous blood-like fluids, while fair ladies hung out in castle towers and nefarious noblemen ate meat with their fingers. Directed by and starring Mel Gibson, _Braveheart_ does all that stuff, grandly tracking the story of William Wallace, a 13th- century Scotsman who rallied his countrymen to fight against the tyrannical English King, Edward the Longshanks (Patrick McGoohan). As epic-adventure movies go, this one delivers by the numbers: there are lots and lots of men in long ratty hair and kilts, men in warpaint, men in mud, men in pain. So many men, so many details. Size and sweep are the organizing principles: this is a huge project (reported cost is something like $70 million), close to three hours long, filmed on locations in Scotland and Ireland (very green, very widescreen). It's clear that the production is at least as large as the movie's legendary subject: the press kit quotes the Encyclopedia Britannica and boasts separate sections for "Battle Sequences,'' "Art and Design,'' "Costumes,'' and "The World of 'Braveheart,''' listing stats as measures of "authenticity'' and scope: "1700 of the Irish Army's reserve forces acted as the infantry,'' "10,000 arrows with rubber tips,'' "40-foot flames,'' "6000 costumes,'' and "3000 meters of plaid were woven in eight different colors.'' The HBO "First Look" running during June underlines what a fun shoot it was, how wonderful Mel is, how long the days were. You get the picture. As most of the film's reviewers have been noting, the battle scenes are plenty barbarous, lots of hand-to-hand conflict, with many stuntmen (and some actors) deploying a variety of body-rending implements - hammers, swords, spears, arrows, rocks, and balls on chains. In fact, these scenes are well-filmed and edited, with focus on Wallace and his immediate cohorts, so that you're inclined to wince as the actors pummel and pierce each other, grunting and screaming and losing limbs. That is, focus on Gibson, in the blue-and- white face paint you've seen in the trailers, repeatedly bloodied and scarred. And he's real valiant here, rousing the troops to action with speeches about honor and liberty, galloping across fields on a big black horse, running pell-mell into well-armed lines of uniformed (English) soldiers. There's a potentially interesting edge in his performance, in that Gibson is always-already a contemporary action-hero (he cracks wise here, stopping short of Three Stooges routines), transplanted into a more rudimentary, almost-elemental era, so that he roars and gesticulates with a near-neanderthal flair while he's taking down entire squads of opponents in perfectly-choreographed kick-and-punch scenes. All this brutality is, according to the movie's ads, inspired by passion and romance. It begins with a very young Wallace confronting the deaths of his father and brother. At the gravesite, he's comforted by a fellow villager, a little girl named Murron. He leaves for "many years,'' during which he's instructed by an uncle. Upon his return as Mel Gibson, he re-encounters the lovely Murron (grown-up version played by Catherine McCormack, who's well-cast as the film's reigning emblem of earthy-virtue and natural-beauty, though it's a tiresomely pedestal-part): their endless love is rekindled, they ride a horse together in the rain, they have sex in a beautifully-shadowed glade, and the motivating tragedy follows: Wallace seeks vigorous macho vengeance, and gets most of his village-fellows to throw in with him. Wallace cheerfully adopts the epithet "savage,'' because to him it means a rejection of "civilization'' that's premised on lack of freedom. The assorted bad guys are - no surprise - considerably less manly. The clans' noblemen argue amongst themselves over land and titles (bestowed by England, in a traditional ploy to divide and conquer the Scots). Meanwhile, the titular King of Scotland, Robert the Bruce (Angus McFadden, also starring as Richard Burton in NBC's _Liz: The Elizabeth Taylor Story_), waffles, torn as he is between his father's advice to betray Wallace and own gulping admiration for the charsimatic leader. All this masculine-posturing can't really help but suggest a range of erotics and attractions. Such tensions are typically deflected by making those who worry about wussy things like titles and wealth into traitors, and showing heroes in overstatedly hetero-positions; in other words, standard tactics in any men-in-close-quarters movie (see, for instance, _Diehardwithavenegance_ and _Crimson Tide_). So, King Edward is greedy, imperious, and mean-tempered. He has an heir, also named Edward (Peter Hanly) whose manliness is at issue: even though dad has arranged his son's marriage to the self-assured French Princess Isabelle (Sophie Marceau) in an effort to solidify some political aligments, said son has a boyfriend. It's hardly surprising that in a Mel Gibson movie, this relationship becomes a cheap device, an obvious way to denigrate the Prince as both producer and product of ideological, moral, and material corruptions. This isn't a question of historical accuracy (as there were no "homosexuals'' identified as such in the 13th century; there were, rather, continuums of sexual activities), but of representation: the lovers are portrayed as ignominious, clueless and impertinent pretty boys, images filtered through a contemporary phobic lens. One question that _Braveheart_ raises in a roundabout way, along with _Rob Roy_, _Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves_, _Legends of the Fall_, and likely the Richard Gere (!) version of the Camelot legend (_First Knight_) due out later this summer, has to do with the (changing) functions of epic-legend-adventure movies: what do they do, how do they succeed, in a current culture so thick with cynicism and distrust? The obvious answer is the old one, the one that applied to Errol Flynn movies, the one that makes a mantra of "escapism'': the combat scenes are full of ripping good carnage, the romance is accompanied by a mighty orchestra, the effects are stunning (or at least get word-of-mouth that they should be seen on a large screen, not video), the individual hero triumphs (no matter how thunderingly white, hetero, and middleclass he must be to fit and reconfirm the tradition), so that class systems and imperial governments look surmountable. Granted, this triumph is premised on what appears to be a moral ground (Wallace "deserves" to win, because he's lost so much already and because he's so movie-star attractive), but the point is that this ground is less than absolute: he's rather a brutal guy, even if he is a tactical genius and we never see his opponents suffering (except when they "deserve" it). In addition, this is an unusual film in that it displays white men with race, with ethnicity (and yes, in skirts). The movie can't quite keep straight (in all senses of the word) the lines between genders, races, and classes. And this makes its appeal to a utopia rather uncertain. _Braveheart_ is so perpetually blustery, so long (it _feels_ like three hours), so (occasionally) campy, so (occasionally) offensive, so hopeless and so silly. I wouldn't go so far as to call this a postmodern legend-epic - it's much too entrenched in the accoutrements of the genre, much too enamored of itself. As it shows white men as But it falls apart in such unmistakable ways, through its unwieldy timeframe, its reliance on the plainly out-of-time Gibson persona, its tiring anxieties about loyalty and courage, its oversized-ness which seems to collapse in on itself. This makes the "escape'' a little hard to take. Cynthia Fuchs teaches film and media studies at George Mason University. Copyright by Cynthia Fuchs. All rights reserved. Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the author. This review originally appeared in the Philadelphia _City Paper_.