DVD review from The Movie Snob:

Braveheart (B). Last time I was feeling under the weather, I took advantage of my down time to watch a long epic movie that I had missed in the theaters, namely Titanic. So when I came down with a bad head cold last week, I decided to take in another long Best Picture that I had missed, Mel Gibson's Braveheart. It wasn't a bad flick, but I don't think I liked it as much as I did the very comparable Gladiator. You've probably already seen Braveheart, so there's no point in my summarizing the plot, but I will say that Gibson's 13th century Scottish patriot William Wallace seemed to have some pretty anachronistic ideas about freedom, tyranny, and the duties of a government to the governed. And according to the "making of" documentary on the DVD, the historical Wallace was more of a medieval savage than Gibson's philosophical, Latin- and French-speaking Wallace. On the plus side, the battle scenes are very impressive, and the villages and castles seem very true-to-life, meaning very primitive and constantly surrounded by mud and filth. Made me glad to be living in 21st century America, that's for sure.