"Braveheart" 30th Anniversary Retrospective: Nothing More Than A Lesser "Gladiator"

Sure, it precedes Ridley Scott's epic, but "Braveheart" resists the revenge to devastating effect.

January 15, 2025

In 14th-century Portugal, King Alfonso IV, incensed by his son-in-law's infidelity, forged a new alliance by marrying his son, Prince Peter, to Constanza, the daughter of a Castilian nobleman. She was a good match worthy of royalty, a political thread to weave through the kingdoms. She also had a court lady named Ines de Castro.

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Ines was beautiful, the sole value of women in those times, so naturally, Peter fell in love with her. The two had an affair until Constanza died in 1345, a romance so scandalous that Alfonso banished Ines from court, concerned that Peter’srefusal to marry a noblewoman would poison the royal well and plunge the country into civil war upon his death. Ines lived in a monastery until 1355 when Alfonso sent three assassins to decapitate her in front of her young children.

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Peter was enraged. He waged war against his father to avenge his lover’s death, though the revolt failed. Fortunately for Peter, his father was not long for the throne: he died in 1357, making Peter king.

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His first order of business was to bring Ines’ assassins to court for her murder. As legend tells it, they were sentenced to death, which Peter carried out himself, ripping their hearts out with his bare hands.

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It is a tale of political machinations, forbidden romance, familial betrayal, lost love, vicious murder, failed vengeance, and brutal justice. The motive was clear: an eye for an eye, blindness be damned.

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Braveheart is a historical tale that refuses to benefit from the barbary of history. We cannot commend past figures for their savagery and bloodlust, but we can for being principled: justice is a subjective concept unless it is ours.

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What other explanation is there for Henry VIII being so trigger-happy with his wives that only two survived? What else can explain his daughter burning over 300 Protestants at the stake in an ill-conceived religious cleansing? If nothing else, they stuck to their guns.

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Of course, to stick to guns, one must have guns. These people had to conceptualize their worldview and everything they did to secure it. There could be no holes, no chinks in the armor, no exceptions to the rule, or excuses for desired deviations. They wanted what they wanted because they wanted it: they believed in it.

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William Wallace, the freedom fighter battling for Scottish independence in the 13th century, believes in nothing. His father died in the fight for freedom, but what of it? Wallace does not take up arms against England to secure the freedom for which his father died. He instead matures into adulthood with no concept of the oppression the Scottish endure or the ramifications of letting that oppression persist. His sole concern is the woman, Murron, who once gave him a flower. The two eye, bed, and marry each other, which leads to her death when an English garrison visits their village and spots them in the throes of affection. The soldiers attempt to rape Murron. She fights back, so they execute her, leading William to slaughter the soldiers, sparking a revolution for Scottish independence.

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Such is the reality of Braveheart, a far more interesting one than the movie tries to force by playing at an ode to freedom. If freedom is a worthy cause, Wallace would have begun the fight long ago. Instead, he did nothing because freedom meant nothing. Only after his wife gets murdered does freedom have value.

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He wants revenge, the purest of all motivations. Revenge is clean: earned with blood, but clean. It is uncomplicated and uncompromising, sought for reasons easily understood. It cannot get bought, negotiated, or treated into memory. No edict justifies cessation; no declaration can undo its necessity. Revenge gets forged by circumstances that cannot get resolved unless acted upon by revenge.

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If he believes Murron’s death a direct consequence of Scottish oppression, so be it, but Braveheart cannot even muster that. It claims freedom fuels Wallace but calls into question the concept itself.

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The Scottish are gifted warriors but ineffectual leaders; they lack unity or discipline, intellect or perspective. They havethe maturity of a frat house during Greek week and no concept of what freedom actually means.

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No surprise here; it is our nature to call for things on principle without understanding the minutiae. Freedom is great in a vacuum; its merits are simple platitudes to exploit, but rationalizing Scottish independence in narrative form means relegating the enemy to an Angolophobic take on England. Longshanks spends the film twirling his mustache, written thinly and with all the classic trappings of a typical villain. He’s going to fire upon his own troops? Did he throw that guy out of a window?

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It is easy to see such barbarity and call for the Scots' independence and for the English to get put in their place, but freedom is more than being free. We can rightfully condemn colonialism, but a film cannot do justice to the savagery of the Belgian Congo or the British role in persisting the famines in India. It was bad, and a quick dive into history can reveal just how bad, but a film cannot state facts and expect us to buy into something. History cannot manipulate. It can only exist and suffer our interpretation. We reject, deny, dismiss, or bastardize it. What we cannot do is ignore it. It will make us feel something, regardless of how we react to that feeling.

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But a movie can manipulate, so we are attuned to its manipulations. We sense when it wants to forgo legitimate storytelling and world-building for cheap tricks and broad sentiment. We can tell when it relies on ideas rather than specifics. Braveheart wants to sell us on Scottish independence through virtue of a despicable English monarchy but lacks the self-awareness to know it cannot sell us based on the Scottish themselves. While they may be effective in tactical bursts, nothing indicates they would do themselves any favors by being independent; they cannot even trust their own to be true to the cause.

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The principle of freedom could mean something if Braveheart understood freedom can succeed as a concept. Instead, it asks us to support the Scottish for who they are and condemn the English for who they are, but the Scottish are irritating, incompetent, and childish; the English get too thinly imagined to take seriously.

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We can survive without a mind: our brains can function enough to keep us alive without forming thoughts or recognizing the world around us, but we cannot survive without a heart. Films are very much the same way. In rare cases, they can act on principle and succeed, doing little to evolve themselves by trusting in the truth of their concepts. A film cannot, however, survive without a heart. It must feel its way through its principles with individuality that justifies investing in the journey.

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Braveheart has no heart. It believes it does, but it does not. We love the same as everyone else. We know this, but to us, it is our love. Our fights are our fights; our struggles are our struggles. No matter how much it bellows about freedom, paints its face blue, moons its enemies in disdain, murders those who betray it, and cries out in defiance as the executioner lowers his mighty ax, it is empty. It feels, and thus is, nothing.

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The scenery is beautiful in theory but wasted in practice. The music befits a charming stroll through the Scottish forest or over the lush hills, not a historical drama of war and bloodshed. It is built on trope, characterizing Wallace without making him a genuine person and explaining his historical relevance by lamely playing at our tendency to doll up figures in our minds despite their innate humanity. It makes things true at its convenience and false just as quickly. It is never as intriguing as what it is in nature and tries to be by nurture.

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Even if it achieved these successes, it remains fundamentally flawed: it is not freedom but revenge. If Braveheart accepted this and realized freedom means little against what matters most to us, that individual interests will always outweigh those of the many, and that a man can do incredible things for selfish reasons, it would be a better movie.

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After all, this is history, and it does not favor pure intent. It does, however, favor pure motivations, which are usually selfish. We want love or sex, money or food, status or revenge. Freedom is a novel idea for the oppressed and a false one for those who know you can never really have it. You can have it more than the next person, but it’s never genuine.

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But revenge? Revenge is real. It was real for the men who got their hearts ripped out and for the king who executed them for murdering the woman he loved. It was real for the father whose own son revolted against him and for the children he traumatized by having their mother killed. It was real for William Wallace, whose wife got ripped away from him in the blink of an eye.

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Perhaps there are more flowery ideas on which to build a movie. However, few are more authentic, and Braveheart should have accepted that. After all, if an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, we wouldn’t have to see Braveheart to begin with.