I don’t think this movie wants to be an appendage to Braveheart. But that’s what it is. It picks up where Braveheart left off, following Robert the Bruce in his morally questionable journey to unite Scotland and free it from British rule (the goal is not morally questionable, but the actions he takes to achieve this goal certainly are). I keep going back and forth on how I feel about this movie. There are some highlights for sure. I was pleasantly surprised with Chris Pine’s performance, for instance. And Florence Pugh is great as his royally arranged wife Elizabeth de Burgh. In fact, I wish we got to see more of their relationship. I know the director cut about 20 minutes from the first version, and I think the pacing of the movie likely benefits from that. But he probably could have cut a few more minutes of gratuitous blood-and-guts battle scenes and spent a little bit more time highlighting their relationship. I think that might have given more insight into his character, which felt underdeveloped (even though we spend almost the entire movie following him around). The movie looks great for the most part, with some gorgeous on-location landscape cinematography. The battle scenes are intense and well-paced, though definitely a bit over the top when it comes to blood mist. Overall, this is a decent period film that almost hits the marks it wants to.

EDIT: Apparently Netflix was trying to position this film as a prestige awards contender. In which case…it did not hit almost hit the marks it wanted to. It fell a bit short, in fact.

3.5 out of 5 stars