Re: LOTM versus BRAVEHEART

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Posted by Myles Keogh on October 11, 1998 at 21:57:06:

In Reply to: LOTM versus BRAVEHEART posted by Rich on October 10, 1998 at 03:47:55:


Hi,

I liked Braveheart alot but it's crassness and unfortunate attempts to pander to a lightweight summer audience keep it off my all time favorites list. Never came close to dethroning LOTM.

Rob Roy was a very good movie. That scenery! Those terrific villians! Tim Roth's Archie Cunningham compares well to Studi's Magua since both these characters are more developed than the usual film villian in that they have reasons for what prompts them to act the way they do. Also Rob Roy has quite simply the greatest sword fight I have ever seen in any movie. LOTM still beats it out on my favorites list since it doesn't the have the "size." Rob Roy lacks the spectacle of LOTM. It's a small story and its rather stark realism (bad teeth, dirty looking hair, bodily functions, foul language, facial hair) make it more comparable to the terrific Black Robe than LOTM.

I also loved Lonesome Dove. I think it is the best thing ever made for television next to Roots. I have read the novel at least five times. Unfortunately I have been disappointed by its sequels and prequels in both written and film versions. I think anyone who wants to see a sequel to LOTM should consider the example of Lonesome Dove and its progeny in order to see that lighting rarely strikes twice.

Finally has any moive ever come close to knocking off LOTM as my all time favorite? I have a ton of favorite movies but LOTM had always had a special place of its own. And for six years it pretty much held that position until a few months ago when I went to see Saving Private Ryan. I left the theater absolutely stunned. Needless to say I returned the theater quite a few times since and I still leave a little bit shaken. For six years I thought Uncus' and Magua's desperate fight was the most emotionally powerful hand to hand combat scene I had ever seen. But in the last half hour of SPR a US Army ranger gets into a knife fight with a SS panzergrenadier and it is one of the most emotional moments of any film I have ever seen. I have never felt more like standing and screaming at the screen than during that scene. (I didn't do it, of course; but many others around me didn't let their practicality harness their emotions.) When it comes to an emotional wallop SPR's last half hour of complete carnage has finally overcome LOTM's on my list of all time great endings.

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