Review: Robert the Bruce

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

PLOT: Following the death of William Wallace and sporting a price on his head courtesy of the King of England, an injured Robert the Bruce (Angus Macfadyen) takes shelter at the farm of a widow and her children.

REVIEW: First thing’s first – this is not an official sequel to BRAVEHEART. While Angus Macfadyen is indeed reprising the role he played in that 1995 classic, this is a micro-budget indie spin-off at best, with little connecting the two films outside of its star. Nor is it related to the big-budget OUTLAW KING, in which Chris Pine played the role. While one can see why Macfadyen would want to continue in the part given Robert’s history post-BRAVEHEART, it’s limited by its budget and the fact that at fifty-four, its star is perhaps a little too old for the part.

All that said, ROBERT THE BRUCE, while often dull, isn’t a disaster. While one questions the notion of making an epic on a shoe-string budget, much less having Montana stand in for Scotland, director Richard Gray makes the most of his limited resources. While large scale action isn't on the menu, the movie never really looks cheap, and the cast isn’t half bad, with bit players Patrick Fugit (clearly having fun as a Scottish rogue) and Jared Harris classing the production up, while others like Anna Hutchison and Zack McGowan are more than decent as the folks Robert the Bruce meets in his travels. Hutchison plays the conspicuously young widow who shelters the Bruce, while McGowan plays her villainous, amorous brother in law.

But what of Macfadyen? While, again, possibly too old for the part, he does still have some legitimate gravitas (he was excellent in the recent THE LOST CITY OF Z, as well as in Cameron Crowe’s WE BOUGHT A ZOO), although some of the choices here are questionable. For one, Robert the Bruce has very little dialogue, particularly in his one scene opposite Harris, who plays a Scottish nobleman who’s betrayed him. I get that it’s being presented as a heroic story being told by Hutchison to her children, which is supposed to set the Bruce up as a kind of legendary man of few words, but it feels like a goofy way to start the film, especially given that it’s the one part of the film where he would get to bounce off of Harris, who can’t help but elevate everything he’s in. Their scene should have been…juicier.

Robert the Bruce is wounded early on in the film, meaning he spends much of it being nursed back to health, so action scenes are mostly on the back burner until the finale. What’s worse is that he's offscreen for a large chunk of the two-hour-plus running time, which is odd considering he’s the titular character. It’s as if the thinking was that he was so well established by BRAVEHEART that less is more, but not only was that film two and a half decades ago, the character was far from that movie’s star.

All in all, ROBERT THE BRUCE isn’t a disastrous vanity project, as everyone involved makes the most of what they have to work with, but it can’t be denied that it’s twenty years too late. Some of the ideas here aren’t bad, with it almost playing out like a semi-remake of an old Charlton Heston western from the sixties, WILL PENNY (in fact – the movie itself feels a lot more like a small-stakes western than a European history epic), not a bad way to stretch the budget. But, it’s too long and too dull to connect unless you're a massive BRAVEHEART devotee who thought OUTLAW KING departed too strongly from the vibe of Mel Gibson's film.

Robert the Bruce

BELOW AVERAGE

5

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