The Plot... In 1280 AD, Edward I of England, aka "Longshanks", occupies much of Scotland, and the oppressive rule there leads to the deaths of William Wallace's family. Years later, Wallace is living with his uncle, farming, and refuses to be involved in the ongoing battle between Scotland and England... until they come and kill his fiancee, Murron. Wallace takes on the group, killing the evil sheriff with the same knife that killed Murron.
Knowing the king will retaliate, William Wallace begins to lead Scotland in a revolt against England, which results in lots of gory battles, lots of axes being swung, and a betrayal by Scottish nobility.
Why It In The Dave100... Are you kidding? Braveheart rocks. I'm a sucker for most "huge armies in a field running towards each other with sticks and rocks and bows and arrows and knifes and swords until they crash into each other in the middle of the field" kind of movies. The Lord of the Rings movies were perfect at this, but Braveheart might have been a great precursor.
Mel Gibson is in all his manliness, half-Mullet and Scottish accent and all. And the ending is just brutal. Funny thing about this film, it didn't make my initial The Dave100 list when I was first doing a draft. Keep in mind this list took about six months to put together, and this was one I was on the fence about for a while... and so I decided to watch it again, to figure out what I thought about it, once and for all.
Luckily for me, it was appearing on HBO like, four times per day... so I watched it. And I watched it. And I watched it. All in all, I probably saw the movie about seven times in a two week period, and finally remembered just how great, and really how beautiful this film was.
Hey, Its That Guy!... Bryan Cox, who is Argyle Wallace in this movie, is also seen as Stryker in X2: X-Men United (but Mikey Nipp might remember him from his epic blockbuster "The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep"), while Brendan Gleeson is going to be pretty familiar to The Enchanting Nikki Brown. While Gleeson plays Campbell in "Braveheart", he's also Mad-Eye Moody in the Harry Potter films.
Random Trivia... When asked by a local why the Battle of Stirling Bridge was filmed on an open plain, Gibson answered that "the bridge got in the way". "Aye," the local answered. "That's what the English found."