Braveheart (1995)

FREEEEDOM. Go on, you know you screamed it too. At the TV, at the ceiling, at absolutely nobody in particular. That's what Braveheart does to you, and I'll be honest, I'm half Scottish, so I didn't stand a chance. The moment those pipes kicked in and the Highlands stretched out across the screen, something in my blood just responded. Completely involuntary. Slightly embarrassing. Absolutely worth it.

Now, I have to be upfront: this film is historical fan fiction in a kilt. The liberties taken with the actual story of William Wallace are not small liberties. They are enormous, swaggering, chest-painted liberties. Historians have been wincing at this film for thirty years and they're not wrong to. If you're after a documentary, look elsewhere. If you're after a rollicking, emotionally manipulative, stirringly scored epic that makes you feel things you weren't necessarily planning to feel on a Tuesday evening, then pull up a chair.

Mel Gibson, whatever you think of him as a person, throws himself into this completely. There's a raw, almost reckless intensity to his performance that carries the whole thing. He's not playing a man from a history book. He's playing a myth, and he knows it, and he commits to it without blinking. The speeches land because he makes you believe he believes every word. That's harder to pull off than it looks.

The battle sequences are genuinely impressive, and I don't say that lightly. Visceral, chaotic, and bloody without tipping into pure gratuitousness, they still hold up better than plenty of modern action set pieces that cost ten times as much. There's a weight and a scrappiness to the fighting that makes it feel grounded even when everything else around it is gloriously over the top. Mud, screaming, sheer desperation. It works.

The music deserves its own mention. It swells at exactly the right moments to pull the rug from under you emotionally, and you know it's doing it, and you let it do it anyway. That's the mark of a score doing its job properly. By the time the film reaches its conclusion, I was genuinely moved, even knowing the history had been cheerfully mangled, even knowing the warpaint is apparently all wrong, even knowing half the Irish extras could probably be spotted in other productions from the same era.

It's interesting to think about this alongside the rest of Gibson's career as a director. I've written about Apocalypto before, and there's a similar energy at work there: the visceral action, the grand emotional stakes, the slightly unhinged commitment to spectacle. He clearly has a genuine gift for this kind of filmmaking, whatever else might be said about him. And if you enjoyed Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for similar reasons, that slightly daft, historically dubious, enormously entertaining epic energy, then Braveheart absolutely belongs in the same conversation, though I'd argue it does the job considerably better.

Is it dated in places? Yes. Certain scenes creak a bit, and the romance plotline is the weakest thread running through it. The pacing sags occasionally in the middle stretches. These are fair criticisms and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But here's the thing. When it's firing, it's genuinely thrilling. It taps into something primal about freedom and sacrifice and refusing to bend the knee, and it does so with enough conviction that you get swept up regardless of your cynicism. Slightly rough around the edges now, wildly inaccurate throughout, and still an absolute cracking watch.

Four stars. Aye.

Rating: ★★★★  | Year: 1995  | Watched: 2025-04-06

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Paramount Plus Premium · Paramount Plus Essential · Paramount+ Amazon Channel · Paramount+ Roku Premium Channel
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Physical: Amazon US

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More from Mel Gibson: Apocalypto (2006) · The Passion of the Christ (2004)
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More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)