Braveheart

What to say about Braveheart?

This movie holds up against the challenge of aging, its exciting, adventurous, funny and passionate. The movie is beautifully shot and sounds incredible.

Is it violent? Sure but what war isn't. I think Mel makes violence as much a part of the story in all his (relevant) films. The characters struggle through great violence and the impacts that is has on them, by not shying away from it we are allowed to get a small appreciation of it and them.

The movie isn't OTT but delivers great action that serves the story and entertains the viewer.

Its considered a classic film and so it is.

Most on this site pick the Godfather, or the Shawshank Redemption, but this is it, this is the best film ever made. People will complain, will argue that I am wrong, but I will say it again...Braveheart is as close to perfection as a movie can be. The acting is superb, the man who played Lonshanks, the actor who portrayed Robert the Bruce, both should have been nominated for Oscars due to their powerful rendering of evil and a man who is saved from losing his humanity (from becoming evil) by meeting William Wallace. And let us not forget the direction, the cinematography. Braveheart is glorious, beautiful to look at. The slow motion pictures of horses preparing to charge armed combatants, the entire landscape of Scotland that Mel Gibson captures with the camera. Braveheart is artwork, it is as good as any picture. That the film is number 93 on the list of the top 250 movies ever is a shame. Yes there is violence in this film but that violence does serve a point...that freedom isn't free and sometimes it takes death, gruesome and horrible, to let ones people taste what it is like to be free. Braveheart is a great movie and it deserves to at least be in the top ten of IMDb's list of greatest films.

A simple message but even today, over seven hundred years later, there are far too many captive to their cultures, governments and institutions. They take a large slice, sometimes all of the freedoms William Wallace and so many others fought for. Keep up the fight because, like the tide, those oppressive forces wont curtail.

A rousing piece of cinema, you can forgive the historical inaccuracies in order for it to tell a hugely engaging and inspirational story full of hope, although it leaves you under no illusion of mans inhumanity to man and the vile and despicable things that can be done in the name of greed, power and control.

Someone really missed out on a good story here. The William Wallace story is exceptional so why do Hollywood have to "improve" it and turn it into a second-rate, overlong mess of a film? How can you have the Battle of Stirling Bridge _without_ the bridge? Producers have claimed that the bridge "got in the way". Funny, the English army discovered that too. And why demean the hero by having him up against such a pantomime villain - sure Edward was a twisted b*****d, but the filmmakers might as well have given him a sidekick called Igor and have him cackle at choice moments throughout the film, he was that unsubtle. Most importantly, however, it seems a real shame that it should be this film that should have captured the hearts of the Scottish nation, they deserve so much better. Would you believe there is now a hideous statue of Mel Gibson at the foot of the Wallace Memorial in Stirling? Would you believe people are leaving flowers beneath it? This film is a travesty of both a good story and history itself. Scotland deserves so much better.

It doesn't get any better than this. Mel Gibson didn't just star in this movie but directed and produced. No one will ever forget...

Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!