It would be epic in itself to report that the life of the Scottish rebel, Sir William Wallace, had been brought to the screen with some semblance of truth and dignity by Mel Gibson, but unfortunately, the Gibson screen image seems to be more at stake here than the recreation of a complicated and mesmerizing epoch in history.

Braveheart fictionalizes Wallace, turning his moral ambiguity and complex, egotistical discontent into another in a series of Gibson's sensitive screen loners. Mad Max lost his wife at the hands of the biker gang. Martin Riggs in the Lethal Weapon series lost both wife and girlfriend to the evil South African politicos.

Sir William Wallace is turned into both an orphan and a widower early on in Braveheart, mercilessly stacking the deck toward our rooting for his pilgrimage against the absolute, malevolent English. Never mind that the real Wallace fought alongside his brother, Sir Malcolm, forcibly married an English widow after the killing of his first wife, less a murderer for the freedom of Scotland than King Edward I of England was for power and land.

As a director, Gibson leads with a heavy hand, settling for another bloody battle whenever the repetitiously and marginally eventful script begins to fold in on itself. Stylistically, he made greater strides and took bigger risks with his first effort, The Man Without A Face. Braveheart opts to turn cowardly, settling for the magnification of Gibson's idol status, forfeiting the complex, more nebulous magnificence of the real Sir William Wallace and virtually excising the strategic brilliance of Robert The Bruce. Think of what an ambitious intrigue the truth would have made. Alas, for Mel Gibson, that's a different story.