Three-hour epic, directed by and starring Mel Gibson, forged from the pages of Scottish history (turn of the 13th Century) that deal with William Wallace, a personage who emerges in this account as part Spartacus (the band of guerrillas that grows to an army), part Jesse James or Josey Wales (the slaughtered family as bellicose motivation), part Robin Hood (a genteel Maid Marian figure in the form of the French-born Princess of Wales), part other people too, no doubt. In sum and in short, a mythic hero. Off the present evidence, on top of the prior evidence of The Man without a Face, Gibson's main incentive to direct would seem to be the latitude it affords him to feel sorry for himself. To suffer. To stand tall regardless. To clap himself on the back. To dispatch a 'copter-camera to circle around him at the summit of a hill, while (cut to closeup) he gazes off into the distance with tragic knowledge. It's hard to find much incentive in the actual direction, which consists mostly of monotonously flat, squarish, centered compositions against a mushy background. Slow-motion is the ready tool to signal momentousness, underscore sentiment, etc. In a word, the direction is simple-minded. Which provides little assistance for the simple-minded narrative, with its plainly labelled good guys and bad, rights and wrongs. Allowing all that, and several vats of blood besides, it must be said that the movie is not unendurable. The three hours fly by in what feels like, oh, two and a half. Sophie Marceau, Catherine McCormack, Patrick McGoohan, Angus McFadyen. (1995) — Duncan Shepherd