Braveheart

Watching Braveheart again I wasn't sure if it will stand up over time. It was released the summer after I graduated high school and of course being a 17 year old male I love the violence and gore.  So, being a bit older now I was wondering if I would still love it as much.  Turns out that it still is a great movie.

Braveheart is about the life of William Wallace a Scottish warrior who fights to free Scotland from England rule.  The film starts with Wallace as a child as he witnesses the cruel effects of living under English rule when his father is murdered during a battle.  After his father dies he travels with his uncle who teaches him to read and speak in many languages.  When he comes back to Scotland to settle down and start a family once again the English kill someone he loves. This time his wife Marron.  Fueled by rage he takes revenge on the English and in the process starts a revolution.  Uniting Scottish Clans and warriors from all around his takes on the might English Army.  The only ones who would not help him are the Scottish Nobles who betray his efforts to unite Scotland.  He eventually leads an army and attacks England before being completely betrayed by the nobles and captured and sent to London to be tortured and killed. 

The one thing I remembered and loved about this movie are the gruesome fight scenes and Mel Gibson knows how to film bloody battle scenes.  Besides all the fighting and gore the movie has a love story to it and everyone can relate to the idea of fighting for ones freedom.  The film is brilliantly filmed and looks great also the music captures the mood perfectly.  The speeches that Gibson gives now seems silly since they have been parodied so often and probably also because I had a roommate in college that would constantly recite the whole battle speech.  But you can still feel the intensity.  I remember seeing it with my girlfriend at the time whose biggest problem with the movie was all the horses that died. She didn't mind all the people getting beheaded but don't hurt the horses.  Still one of the most violent movies to win Best Picture. 

Braveheart winning Best Picture came as a shock that year for most everybody.  It did not win any of the critic awards leading up to the Academy Awards so it was kind of a dark horse victory.  There were a diverse group of nominees that year with no clear standout.  The other nominees were Apollo 13, Sense and Sensibility, Babe, and Il Postino.  So you have a kids movie like Babe against the first foreign language movie to be nominated in almost 20 years.  The biggest surprise are probably the movies that didn't get nominated. Movies like Seven, The Usual Suspects, Toy Story, Leaving Las Vegas, and Dead Man Walking.  Dead Man Walking and Leaving Las Vegas both were nominated for Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director but did not get Best Picture. Leaving Las Vegas was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay so it was nominated in 4 out of the 5 top Oscars just missing out on the biggest one it did win Best Actor for Nicholas Cage.  Also of note Toy Story became the first animated film to be nominated for Best Screen Play.