Best Picture: # 68
Original Release Date: May 24, 1995
Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 58 minutes
Director: Mel Gibson
Quick Impressions:
Back in the summer of 1995, not even Mel Gibson spent as much time thinking about Braveheart as my younger sister. She was ten, and Braveheart quickly became her undying obsession. (Maybe it’s not too surprising that she ended up with two M.A.s, one in history and one in film.) It may be U.S. history that she studies and teaches now, but that summer she did nothing but blast bagpipe music, obsess over William Wallace, and try to draft the perfect fan letter to Mel Gibson. I remember at one point, someone (on the news I think) made her furious by suggesting that children should under no circumstances be allowed to watch R-rated movies like Braveheart because they were a corrupting influence. She ranted all over the house about it, finally concluding unironically, “Braveheart hasn’t influenced me at all, and I think I should have the FREEDOM to watch WHATEVER I WANT!” Laughing, I told her, “I think maybe it has influenced you a little bit.” Then she threw a rock at my head and knocked me out.
(Okay that last part didn’t happen, but I can’t swear that my smug attitude didn’t start a fight. She was channeling William Wallace; I wanted to move so that if Braveheart won any Oscars, I could watch. Tensions were running high.) (As I mentioned in my post on Forrest Gump, we lived in Laredo at the time, where it was impossible to get ABC.)
I love English dynastic history. Though I know far more about the Tudors, I’ve occasionally been tempted to read about a Plantagenet or two (or all of them) for fun. (Popular history is great, but chronicle sources are even more entertaining.) Though I had nothing against Braveheart, I didn’t like the movie nearly as much as my sister. Until this viewing, I don’t think I’d seen the film since high school. What I mainly remember was that while my sister obsessed over Gibson’s William Wallace, my favorite character (and performance) in the movie was Patrick McGoohan as Longshanks. At the time, my sister was outraged, and I remember getting into dumb (slightly disingenuous on my part) arguments with her. (“Well, I’ll bet the people in York didn’t like having their houses burned down, either!”) We were both grumpy and wanted to move. (It’s not that I would hold up Edward I as a moral exemplar. I certainly would not. But he wasn’t the worst king.) (It would be so hard to hold that distinction. There are so many kings, and morally, they’re all pretty bad.) (It’s not great to have an evil king, but it’s even worse to have a king who’s both evil and ineffectual.) (At least Edward I was king. Edward III certainly was not the son of William Wallace! This film may be rousing, but it’s not historically accurate.)
As I prepared to watch Braveheart again with my daughter, I wondered to myself, “Why in the world was the evil king my favorite one in the movie?” Then Patrick McGoohan first appeared as Longshanks and said with almost cartoonishly wicked delight, “Scotland…my land.” With a fond smile, I remembered, “Oh yeah!” (It’s just three words! But his entire performance in the film could be reduced to that line—every other trace of him could be cut from the movie—and audiences would think, “That king is the most diabolical villain ever! Look how he revels in his wickedness! He must be stopped!”)
McGoohan is so funny. In his early scenes, he plays the part like he’s in a Victorian melodrama. He seems so delighted to be portraying the ridiculously evil king. In the beginning, he’s almost over-the-top with his intense (and amusing) villainy. What’s great, though, is that as he continues in the role, he becomes increasingly less hilarious and more sinister. Initially, his unabashedly evil self-presentation style is amusing, but as it goes on and on, you begin to realize, “Wait, that’s not funny.” (Obviously evil acts aren’t funny, but McGoohan changes his performance subtly, so that he gradually begins to seem chilling and genuinely frightening. By the end, he’s repulsive as his theatrical displays of strength give way to physical weakness and a very unpleasant, ordinary death. Watching the change in Longshanks over the course of the film makes me appreciate McGoohan’s performance and Gibson’s direction. He seems like he’s going to be a hammy villain used in an obvious way, but in fact, McGoohan is giving a more thoughtful performance of a theatrical man, known for his flourishes of strength and power but undergoing inevitable physical decline that makes him unable to maintain the illusion of might that has sustained his rule. Gibson deserves some credit as the director.) (And I guess he got it since he won an Oscar. That seems like a somewhat higher honor than faint praise from me decades later.)
The Good:
Since I’m already talking about McGoohan, I’ll mention that one of his big scenes generated immense controversy back when the film first came out. There’s a great moment when the future Edward II’s lover boldly starts telling the king his own qualifications, and Longshanks responds by cursorily hurling him out the window to his immediate death.
When I watched in the theater the first time, the entire audience burst out laughing. When we saw the film a second time, there was even more laughter from the audience. So when the media started focusing on this moment, I wasn’t surprised. Some people (GLAAD included) alleged that the moment was played for comedy. I thought, “Well, yes, obviously it’s played for comedy. Everyone always laughs, and they’re laughing because the movie is working, not because it’s bad.”
But why did everyone laugh? Was it simply the timing of the brutal act and the delicious, cartoonish evil that McGoohan brought to the king? Was it that the person thrown out the window was insufferable and annoying, trying to assert authority where he had none? (At the time, a mix of those two elements was my own initial take. Keep in mind, I was sixteen.)
But all of this was complicated by the fact that the person who got thrown out the window was Prince Edward’s male lover. Was the audience laughing because he was gay? (Was the movie suggesting that gay people are annoying and have no credibility, that when they pretend to have valid insights into the affairs of “real men,” it’s funny to throw them out the window to show them their place?)
At the time, I thought GLAAD’s complaints (as I understood them) were not completely fair since 1) Braveheart is an extremely violent movie. Most characters (even most main characters) die horribly violent on-screen deaths. 2) Longshanks is the villain and is known for ruthlessly murdering everyone and taking great pleasure in his own displays of power.
But then I thought about it a little more and noticed that every time I engaged someone in conversation about the movie Braveheart, they talked about how funny it was “when that gay guy got thrown out the window” (or some variation of those words). Then I decided, “Okay, yes, GLAAD is completely right about this.”
I heard Mel Gibson himself address the issue at some point. I remember him saying that he had not intended the scene to be comedic, that he certainly hadn’t intended to make Edward II a figure of ridicule because of his sexuality. He went on to add that he considered the prince a fairly tragic figure and that originally there had been more in the screenplay exploring his story that had to be cut for time.
I’ll just go ahead and admit that (perhaps uncharitably) I did not entirely believe Mel Gibson. I mean, in general, I do like his work. I really liked him as Hamlet. (That Franco Zeffirelli Hamlet is probably my favorite movie version of the play.) I thought Apocalypto was surprisingly entertaining. And I eagerly went to The Passion of the Christ. (I was excited to hear Latin spoken in a movie. Despite all the controversy—maybe because of all the controversy—I couldn’t resist seeing the film. I tried to atone for my sin of watching a film that so many people urged against by also paying to see Fahrenheit 9/11 around the same time. To me, this made sense. As long as you make everyone mad…you get to see two movies? I can’t exactly defend my behavior now, but it made perfect sense to me back in 2004. I’m sure that there was a third group of people who would have advocated against both movies, but rest assured that whatever movie they preferred, I saw that one, too.) I remember liking Rosalinda Celetano as Satan. While certainly not unproblematic, Gibson’s take on the character was quite thought provoking.)
I usually like Mel Gibson’s work. (Also, I like Jodie Foster, and that he’s maintained a friendship with her counts in his favor.) But he seems like a complicated person. He’s said a number of curious things over the years. (If you don’t know what I mean, I’m sure Google can fill you in as well as I can). So yes, as an adult, I really did think that Gibson was maybe not being one-hundred percent honest about that window scene. I did think he intended it to be comedic. And I did think the homophobic undercurrent in the film was entirely intentional.
As we watched this time, I braced myself for that scene. I remembered it being funny. I didn’t want to laugh. I worried about how my daughter would react. (Would she get the feeling that the film intended her to laugh there, and would that put her off the whole movie?)
Then the scene arrived, and guess what? We didn’t laugh. It wasn’t funny. In fact, as it’s happening, Edward II looks pitiably horrified. So (somewhat belatedly) I realized, “Wow, I owe Mel Gibson an apology. He’s telling the truth. He really didn’t set up that whole scene as a joke. It only seemed that way at the time because the entire movie audience laughed.” (Now is Edward II portrayed as effeminate, foppish, and ineffectual? Yes. But to be fair, at least some of his contemporaries saw him that way, too. And later, in the Tudor era, Christopher Marlowe’s play did not do his reputation any favors.)
When I realized the window scene wasn’t inherently funny, I also began to notice greater complexity in the way the film uses the Longshanks character than I had perceived when I was younger. So my apologies, Mel Gibson. (Now is it true that the film does have a weird obsession with virility? Yes. I’ll talk about that more later.)
For me, this was my biggest discovery as I rewatched the movie. Early on, I kept noticing little touches and thinking, “This film is so emotionally manipulative,” and it is. But then Gibson pleasantly surprised me by giving me something more sophisticated and thoughtful than I had assumed of the film at the outset.
Speaking of Gibson, I find him quite engaging as William Wallace. (My daughter found his lack of handsomeness distracting. “He’s trying too hard to be handsome,” she declared, then went on and on about it for the better part of an hour. Her extreme disdain for his looks baffles me. I told her that he was People magazine’s first Sexiest Man Alive. She was not impressed. Meanwhile, back in the 90s, my sister was totally in love with him.)
Firmly in the middle ground, I think Gibson is a good actor with classically handsome features. I’m not as excited about him as my sister and People magazine, but I think my daughter’s assessment of him is a little off base. He is good looking. (The movie won’t work unless we’re convinced of Wallace’s virility.) Do I find him distractingly handsome myself? No, but then again, I like the evil king who hurls people out windows, so please don’t go by me. (I also don’t find him distractingly ugly, and I think my daughter’s harsh impression of his looks is unfairly colored by the fact that she resents being back in school.) For me (someone not from medieval Scotland), his accent works. And I’m usually a fan of Gibson’s line delivery. I think he’s good as William Wallace (even though I’m personally more drawn to Patrick McGoohan’s vicious king and that vivacious lady-in-waiting).
And do you know who else is in this movie? Brendan Gleeson! I was shocked. I suppose when I saw the film as a teenager, I wasn’t as familiar with Gleeson. I remembered (and liked) the character of Hamish, but when I suddenly realized Gleeson played Hamish, my daughter found the degree of my amazement very comical. (I forgot Brian Cox was in the movie, too!) (It really had been a while since I saw Braveheart.)
As romances in the film go, Gibson convinced me of the intensity of Wallace’s love for Murron (Catherine McCormack). I do believe that he loves her. And when she dies, it’s easy to see why he would attack the English the way he does. It’s not just that he’s trying to avenge her death. It’s that his love for her (and his desire to raise a family with her, to live a quiet life with her) was the thing holding him back from avenging the death of his father and committing his life to the cause of driving the English out of Scotland.
When I was a teenager, I found Sophie Marceau (as Princess Isabella) and Jeanne Marine (her lady-in-waiting) two of the more compelling characters (simply because I’m not that interested in scenes of brutal warfare). This time around, I found more to appreciate in Peter Hanly’s performance of Prince Edward. (Yes, he’s effeminate and ineffectual, but I’m no longer convinced that Gibson is trying to make us laugh at him. I think some of that was audience failure. Hanly often looks so terrified by his father.) (I’m still a little suspicious of Gibson’s intent, though. The window scene is one thing, but what about every other time we see Prince Edward?)
At one point late in the film, my daughter noted that Robert the Bruce “has the most interesting storyline in the whole movie.” I agree with her. And I wish we saw a bit more of Angus Macfadyen. (The movie might be better if it enlarged the part of Robert the Bruce instead of forcing a romance between Wallace and Isabella.)
When it comes to atmosphere, Braveheart is hard to beat. It won Oscars for cinematography and make-up and was nominated for costume design. I can see why my sister loved the escapism of watching, getting pulled into the arduous, sensory rush of medieval Scotland. We get villages under attack, conferences in castles, dirty, battered, blood-stained, windblown Scotsmen defending their homeland in almost every scene. James Horner’s Oscar nominated score is memorable, too. (I got to hear it quite often as a teenager, courtesy of my sister’s stereo.)
Also noteworthy are the film’s battle scenes. As I mentioned, most of the characters in this movie die violently. Braveheart is extremely violent. Usually, I find graphic violence off-putting. (Actually, this film is no exception. I find the graphic violence off-putting here, too.) (Being put off by graphic violence won’t stop me from liking a movie, though. There are several Quentin Tarantino films I love, not for their graphic violence but in spite of it.) Even though I don’t like the violence, I do think Braveheart’s battle scenes are a strength of the film. The scenes featuring battle and bloodshed are all well-choreographed and easy to follow. I have a tendency to get lost in action sequences, overwhelmed by all the rapid movement and dizzying CGI. In Braveheart, I can always follow what’s going on in battle (even when I would rather not).
I do remember another controversy at the time of the film’s release when the SPCA expressed concerns that real horses may have been injured in the battle sequences. Mel Gibson also responded to these allegations, providing proof that mechanical horses had been used for some sequences. No actual animals were injured during the making of Braveheart. It’s very hard to believe that as you watch the movie, so I suppose that’s to Gibson’s credit, too.
Best Scene Visually:
I’m a bit fixated on that scene when the king throws his son’s lover out the window. Just before the moment with the window, we see a special message from Wallace arrive in a box. (This film came out in 1995, so I’ll just tell you. It’s a head.) (And not just any head, the head of one of the king’s relatives.) Naturally, Longshanks is enraged. But he can’t lash out at Wallace (who isn’t there), so instead he throws his son’s lover out the window. It’s too bad the film doesn’t spend a bit more time on Edward II because think how disturbing this must be from his point of view. I also find this dramatization of the aging of the king kind of fascinating. Edward I can’t live forever. He wishes he could solve all of his problems by throwing people who annoy him out the window, but he can’t. He throws his son’s lover out the window, and this solves precisely nothing. Despite this display of strength, his son is still gay (whether or not his lover is dead), and Longshanks is still getting older and approaching death. There’s a kind of grim foreshadowing here. Even if Wallace were in the room, and Longshanks somehow managed to throw him out the window, that would not solve the problem of Scotland. Longshanks has maintained his rule through his own might, but very soon, he’s going to die. Even if he does manage to kill Wallace in spectacular fashion (which he does), that will not end Scotland’s desire for freedom. (Notice later in the film, the king hears Wallace’s defiant cry of, “Freedom!” through the window (where he’s having him murdered) while on his own deathbed. It doesn’t matter how many people Longshanks throws out the window. He can’t rule with an iron fist after he’s dead.
Best Action Sequence:
I like the battle scene that begins when Longshanks himself appears on the field. This particular engagement gives us the unexpected move by the Irish, the cold-hearted decision of Longshanks to rain arrows down on his own troops, and the painful moment of treachery by Robert the Bruce.
Best Scene:
For some reason, I’m always able to recall most clearly the parts of this movie I find most problematic. I don’t think the Isabella/Wallace love story (if you want to call it that) works as well as it could, yet their scenes together are the ones I keep calling to mind. Gibson delivers lines well, so he’s best in dialogue heavy scenes. (This is probably why his conversations with Isabella are compelling. Even better, perhaps, are his interactions with his wife. In 1995, I wasn’t as taken by the romance in this movie as my sister, but watching now, I did find the courtship of Murron well done.
But what is the best scene in the film?
(Of course, all I can think of now is the moment when William Wallace ominously rides his horse through someone’s house, up the stairs, and out the window. That is not the best scene. Maybe I just have a window fixation. I don’t know. For some reason, as a teenager, I did really enjoy the interlude in which Wallace rides around getting vengeance on all who betrayed him.)
I’ll be completely honest here. I don’t know the best scene in Braveheart. I wrote everything else and left this part for the end and keep coming back to it. Now I’ve gotten distracted by my first look at the cover art for my new novel. I simply have no idea what the best scene in Braveheart is. The longer I try to think of one, the more I remember him jumping out the window on that horse. Then I think of the king throwing the prince’s lover out the window again. I’m starting to want to watch Vertigo.
It’s too bad Robert the Bruce can’t throw his father out the window. (I’m very fond of all of those father/son conversations, too.) I asked my husband what scene he liked best. He hasn’t seen the film in years but mentioned the moment near the end when Wallace yells, “Freedom!” The moment is definitely memorable.
The Negatives:
This isn’t Mel Gibson’s fault, but the entire plot of this “historical” romance is not grounded in much history. The part of this film that makes the least sense to me is the late romance between William Wallace and the Princess Isabella. It probably doesn’t make sense because it didn’t happen. Parts of this film are historically accurate, but this part is not, not in any way.
It’s highly unlikely that Isabella and Wallace ever met. She certainly was not pregnant with his child when he died. She was a child when he died. And that’s fine. Hollywood movies about historical figures do this kind of thing all the time. You wouldn’t go to any movie about Robin Hood or King Arthur and think, “Yes, this is exactly what happened. Every event I see in this movie is factually true.” (I realize some people do, but if you’re one of those people…) (I was going to say, “Please stop,” but I don’t have the heart, honestly. If someone thinks all legends about Robin Hood and King Arthur are historically accurate, then it’s kinder to say, “Please continue.” Why not?)
But just because William Wallace lived (and died, horribly) does not mean that we’re seeing a true story on the screen. We’re not.
What bothers me is that the Isabella part of the story even feels untrue. For me, it doesn’t quite work as fiction. Elements are implausible. He asks her why she keeps giving him warnings. She answers with some cheesy line like, “Because of the way you’re looking at me right now.” She might as well say, “It’s because you’re the star of this movie, and I am the leading lady.” I mean, there’s no reason that she should fall in love with him and even less reason that he should fall in love with her. (Of course, to be fair to the film, I will admit that we’re probably not supposed to think that he has fallen in love with her. It’s more that he sees leadership potential in her, so he kindly gives her a night of passionate lovemaking as a sign of his approval.)
This happens in movies all the time, though. (I know because my daughter calls out every forced romance she sees—except her sensitivity is turned up a little high. She considers every romance forced.) The unlikeliness of this romance doesn’t bother me that much. All the little things that make it feel unnecessary don’t even bother me that much. I like Sophie Marceau. As a teenager, I was in favor of more Sophie Marceau and less graphic violence.
No, what bothers me is the reason that the romance does feel necessary. This movie has a bizarre obsession with virility and conquest by impregnation. (It really does!) You would think it were a movie about Henry VIII!
Admittedly I’m not an expert on Plantagenet history, but I don’t think Edward I actually instituted the right of prima nocta. The film’s plot turns on this (almost certainly fictitious) detail. In Braveheart, Edward I decides to conquer Scotland by “breeding out” the people who lived there. He lets his English nobles sleep with Scottish brides before their husbands do on their wedding night. This is diabolical (though not all that practical. Getting to sleep with a woman first doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’ll impregnate her and her husband won’t. Certainly rape is demoralizing for the woman and her husband, but it hardly guarantees that all first born children will carry the DNA of the English lords, or that all first born children will be sons. I would have to think that even in the medieval period, people would realize the limitations of this plan of conquest. It’s a very weird scheme).
But let’s just set aside concerns of historical accuracy (and of this plan making sense). In the movie, Edward I institutes prima nocta. (“Why don’t the husbands just sleep with the bride the night before the wedding?” my daughter kept asking, which works as a method of foiling the king’s plans only if you believe a woman will definitely conceive the first time she has sex.) As if he’s been listening to my daughter, William Wallace marries in secret. That way, he has first dibs on his wife for sure. But one of the Englishmen notices that she seems to be enjoying life too much to be a virgin. (She looks conspicuously happy.) So then he decides to rape her. (After all, she must be married. She keeps smiling at Mel Gibson all the time. She must have escaped prima nocta.) (He doesn’t seem to be exercising the right of prima nocta himself, though, just committing plain rape.) At any rate, this is what gets Wallace so involved in fighting the English in the first place.
It’s not strange that Wallace finds the practice abhorrent. It is abhorrent. No, what’s strange is that he then turns around and does it back to the English. He doesn’t just defeat them in battle. He impregnates Edward’s son’s wife with his child. The future King Edward III will be the son of William Wallace who has out prima noctaed the instituter of prima nocta. Why? Because he’s virile. He’s a man. He looks at women. Women notice. (We know this because Isabella remarks on it.) The king’s son is not virile. He’s gay. So Edward I’s line dies. (Not really, though, just in this movie.) William Wallace’s son becomes the King of England (in this movie).
That’s what I found strange about Braveheart on this watch, its underlying concept, its obsession with impregnating other people’s wives as a sign of the right to own land. Edward I tries to do it, but it doesn’t work for him. William Wallace does it back. This time, it does work, because he’s a real man. (The narrator tells us in the beginning of the movie that Longshanks himself is very virile, but his son is not, and Longshanks is losing his virility because he’s about to die.)
Now, yes, the historical Isabella probably did scheme with Roger Mortimer (who probably was her lover) to depose and later (probably) murder Edward II (who probably was gay). (I keep saying “probably” because we weren’t there. Sources from the period sometimes contradict one another, and there are contrarian historians out there.) It’s pretty clear, though, that Edward II did have male favorites, and that even at the time many people believed that he might have been sleeping with them. But it’s also pretty clear that he impregnated his wife. In point of fact, being attracted to men doesn’t stop someone from fathering children, and, as King of England, Edward II had ample reason to father a son with his wife. To a degree, this movie irritates me because its underlying premise is just not how reality works. A man’s virility (his handsomeness, his strength) does not necessarily make him a hero. Similarly, his lack of these qualities does not make him a villain. (It does in Braveheart, though. Edward I is dying. He keeps coughing. Edward II is gay. He keeps preening. Robert the Bruce’s dad has leprosy. He looks worse and worse every time we see him. I also noticed that both Edward I and the Bruce’s dad trill their Rs. I don’t know about Edward II.) Yes, it’s possible that William Wallace’s contemporaries thought this way, equating virtue with outward beauty and strength. But Braveheart came out in the 1990s. There’s something frustratingly simplistic about its sensibilities as a film.
There’s also something kind of unsettling about Wallace’s death. (That part is more historically accurate than many other aspects of the movie. Wallace was executed in a horrible, barbarous way.) The film’s fixation on his torture made me think, “It’s no surprise Mel Gibson went on to direct The Passion of the Christ.” I always have had trouble with the glorification of Wallace at the end. I don’t approve of grotesque public executions, but it is worth bearing in mind that Wallace did butcher quite a number of people himself. He may not be guilty of treason against Edward I (to whom he has never given allegiance), but he’s far from innocent. He’s not a martyr. Edward I butchered innocent people. So did William Wallace.
I wish the movie left out the Wallace/Isabella romance. It feels forced. The early (more realistic) romance with Wallace’s wife is romance enough. Now, I am torn here because I do like Sophie Marceau. She and her lady-in-waiting are a welcome, diverting presence in the film. I just don’t quite believe her relationship with William Wallace. I’m not demanding historical accuracy from the movie. I’m perfectly willing to pretend this romance happened. I understand how movies work. But Wallace tells Isabella that he’s drawn to her because she possesses the fine qualities he admired in his wife, like intelligence and the ability to hate the king and plot against him. (He doesn’t put it exactly like that.) The movie seems to be arguing that an intelligent woman will obviously be drawn to the man most worthy of impregnating her. I guess that’s true (??). (I’ll admit that when I was younger, I didn’t see the point of wasting my time on men not worthy of impregnating me.) This is a strange basis for a cinematic romance, though.
The movie seems annoyed that we would even dream of not just going with it, which bugs me. It’s like the film wants to say to us, “Of course she’s in love with him. He’s the main character. Obviously he sleeps with her. She’s a woman.” They do have a common enemy, King Edward I. (But wouldn’t it make more sense for Isabella to sleep with her husband? He has a much clearer path to taking Longshanks’s power than William Wallace. Get pregnant with the prince’s child, and your son will be a king for sure. Get rid of Edward II later, after your son’s paternity has been established, allowing you to put Edward III on the throne and rule as regent.) I feel like the scenes late in the film when Isabella scrambles to find a way to let Wallace live just don’t quite work. This part feels so rushed and contrived. And it does bother me that when the king tries to impregnate Scottish women as a means of conquest, it’s so abhorrent, yet when William Wallace does it, it’s downright heroic because that’s obviously what God would have wanted (because why else would Wallace be so virile?). When I was a teenager, I don’t remember articulating this as clearly, calling it out explicitly, but the film’s implicit take on virility still rankled, making me want to side with Longshanks out of spite.
Now of course, there is one big difference between English lords impregnating newly married Scottish women and William Wallace impregnating Isabella—consent. Wallace doesn’t rape Isabella. I do appreciate that distinction. (I’m just slightly annoyed because the movie’s message seems to be, “Of course, he doesn’t rape her. He doesn’t have to because he’s a real man, so obviously, she wants to be with him.”) There’s just something a little weird about how much the movie fixates on this idea.
That said, despite the contrived Isabella/Wallace romance, Braveheart still irritated me far less than First Knight, another movie we saw that summer which disappointed me far more.
Overall:
I enjoyed watching Braveheart again. I guess I’ll never stop loving the evil King Edward I, but this time around I did appreciate Gibson’s performance as William Wallace a bit more (probably because I had to keep defending him to my daughter). If you like historical adventures, and you haven’t seen the film for which Mel Gibson won his two Oscars (for Best Picture and Best Director) then you probably should watch Braveheart.