Summer of 1995: Braveheart

Revisiting that year’s best picture winner.

Jun 02, 2025

You can’t discuss the summer of 1995 without talking about Braveheart. It made $73 million at the U.S. box office, nearly doubled that take overseas, and spent nine (nonconsecutive) weeks in the top 10 during its run. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and took home five, including trophies for Best Picture and Best Director. It was the crowning achievement of director/star Mel Gibson, who would have his biggest commercial success as a director almost a decade later with The Passion of the Christ. It was a cornerstone movie for young men who aspired to be warrior poet William Wallace and a defining movie of the 1990s.

And I dreaded revisiting it.

I saw Braveheart in theaters. I owned it on VHS and watched it several times throughout my late teens and early twenties. There was a period where it was among my five favorite movies ever made. But time hasn’t been kind to its legacy, for several reasons:

Although the film was a major hit and an awards darling, most of the discussion in recent years has been about how far off the mark it is from reality, with some calling it the most historically inaccurate movie ever made.
Gibson has had his own very public fall from grace in the ensuing years, tumbling off the A-list after drunken, antisemitic rants and violent threats made to his ex-girlfriend1. Gibson was one of the most charming and likable actors, and this irreparably stained his career.
This movie was a touchstone for Christian men in the late Nineties and early Aughts, thanks to John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart. I knew many men who thought this film portrayed the pinnacle of masculinity, and it led to a lot of toxicity. Now, it’s kind of cringe to think about in that aspect.

But, as I said, you can’t talk about the summer of 1995 without talking about Braveheart any more than you can talk about it without talking about Batman Forever2. So, over the recent Memorial Day weekend, I rented it from Amazon and braced myself for the worst.

But whatever fog of cringe, inaccuracy and bad behavior surrounds it, Braveheart still largely works. It’s a violent yet old-fashioned epic that might be low on historical fidelity but is big on energy and sweeping emotion. It’s not a great movie – I don’t know that it deserved to walk home with a Best Picture trophy – but it’s a highly entertaining and enjoyable one, and a reminder that whatever his demons – and not to excuse them – Mel Gibson is a helluva director.

Gibson stars as William Wallace, a farmer living in Scotland in the 1300s who largely tries to avoid entering into conflict with the English rulers. But when his wife – whom he married in secret to avoid having to hand her over on their wedding night – is murdered by one of the English noblemen, he begins a crusade to rally his countrymen and win Scotland’s freedom. This earns the ire of King Longshanks (Patrick McGoohan) and attracts the attention of Princess Isabelle (Sophie Marceau), a French woman married to the king’s son, Edward, who the film heavily hints doesn’t enjoy the company of women. Thus begins a long and violent rebellion, as Wallace wins the hearts of his people and tries to urge Scottish noble Robert the Bruce (Angus McFayden) to join him and lead their people to victory.

The claims of inaccuracy are fairly lengthy, but they also don’t really matter; Braveheart is very open about being a “print the legend” take on history. Narration at the outset notes that “history is written by those who have hanged heroes.” Gibson talked about the creative liberties he took, and an ongoing theme is how Wallace’s legend is exaggerated as tales of his exploits spread. The film is a legend, largely based on a romantic poem; I wouldn’t refer to it if I were writing a paper about Scottish history, but the film never pretends to be a documentary.

Screenwriter Randall Wallace – no relation to the film’s hero – structures things very simply. William Wallace has a childhood origin story, where he stumbles onto the site of a supposed truce to find that Longshanks has hanged local clan leaders. He initially refuses to get involved in the fight for freedom, wanting instead to farm and raise kids with lifelong love (Catherine McCormack). When she’s killed, the film becomes a fairly episodic telling of Wallace gathering a cohort of followers – including Brendan Gleeson as Wallace’s longtime friend, Hamish – attacking the English and winning the hearts of the people. There’s a bit of political intrigue to make the film feel richer than it really is, but by and large, this often feels like a 14th century superhero movie, and I don’t mean that as an insult. The film is told in broad emotional strokes; think about it too much and it’s all a bit ludicrous, but in the moment, Gibson tells an engaging story.

The film’s center of gravity – like any good superhero story – is its protagonist. It would be fair to describe Gibson’s performance – and the way Gibson the director frames Gibson the star – as self-indulgent. This is a film of meaty monologues and inspiring speeches, with Wallace constantly reiterating how much he loves freedom, wants freedom and why people should fight for freedom. Gibson captures himself in heroic, romantic poses, long hair flowing in the wind, bow at the ready. There are three women in this film and Wallace has love scenes with two of them. Honestly, get yourself someone who looks at you the way that Mel Gibson the director looks at Mel Gibson the actor.

But it works in turning Wallace from a historical figure into a mythical icon. Truth be told, few action heroes in the ‘80s and ‘90s rocked long hair as well as Gibson did (he even pulled off a mullet for Lethal Weapon). His Scottish accent might have a bit too much on it, but it’s fine, and Gibson at his prime was one of our most charismatic actors. He conveys warmth and intelligence, and I always enjoyed the light humor he brought to his roles; but when one of his characters is angry, there’s a madness and fury he captures that I don’t know any other A-list star was able to summon (now we might know why). His performance in Braveheart is not necessarily his best – I’ll probably always prefer Gibson as Riggs or Max Rockatansky – but it’s his most iconic and the one that most leverages his movie star charms, to the point where it risks overshadowing everyone else in the movie3.

As I said earlier, Gibson’s current troubles tend to be so forefront these days that it’s tempting to undersell him as a director4. But he’s one of the best action helmers we have. Braveheart is a gorgeous movie, with some breathtaking shots of the highlands and Scottish forests – all the more sweeping and romantic with James Horner’s score underneath. And its battle sequences are spectacular; again, it’s a reminder how visceral and powerful these scenes are when filmed with real stuntmen on real locations prior to the assistance of CGI. The Battle of Stirling is one of the great action sequences, a bloody melee that is staggering in its scale, and it’s a reminder that few directors capture violence as graphically and, yes, thrillingly as Gibson.

Which is part of what gives me pause about Braveheart and has always nagged at me about Gibson5. There’s a fine line between brutality and sadism, and Gibson often drifts uncomfortably to the latter. I understand that battle is brutal, and I have no issue with the gore and blood in the war scenes. But later, as Wallace takes out his anger on the Scottish nobles and murders them in their sleep, the film’s violence becomes more unsettling. Characters suggest that Wallace has gone too far, but the film never does; when Wallace smashes in a coward’s face with a steel ball, the film presents it as badass. Gibson has a history of presenting violence as noble and righteous – the film’s climactic torture scene shows restraint, but the way Gibson lingers on Wallace’s face to let us know “oh yeah, he’s being disemboweled” is a bit much. I don’t know if it would bother me so much without the later context of Gibson’s own personal turmoil and the way violence overwhelms his subsequent films, but it definitely gave me pause.

And while I don’t think it’s a fault of Gibson’s or the film, I still remain troubled by how many men – Christian men – I know saw this and adopted its view of Wallace’s wildness as aspirational. I had a good friend who saw the warrior poet lifestyle as his calling, and he was far from the only one. But embracing myth as a worldview seemed to encourage only wildness and recklessness – and mistreatment of women in many cases – without also acknowledging that sometimes diplomacy, compromise and dialogue are better solutions that wildly running into every battle. I’m not going to say more because I’m far from equipped to delve into all of the cultural baggage of this movie – I’ll just encourage you to read Jesus and John Wayne. But it definitely must be mentioned as part of this movie’s legacy.

Which, in a way, feels unfair. It’s there, but it does risk saddling a piece of entertainment with weight it never intended to carry. On its own merits, Braveheart is a perfectly sweeping, exciting and romantic epic. It works. Despite its troubling legacy and the foibles of its filmmaker, it’s still a highly enjoyable epic.

Summer of 1995: Braveheart

Revisiting that year’s best picture winner.

Previous entries in Summer of 1995:

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