Braveheart/Tear Jerker

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • As Wallace is executed, he sees Murron in the crowd, and he smiles as the axe comes down on him.
  • William as a young boy sees his father's friends coming back... injured, with a wagon. The look on that little boy's face is enough to get the waterworks going.

Campbell: William.... come here, lad.

  • Then there's the damned funeral scene and the Scotch thistle Murron gives him. On the other hand, when Uncle Argyle turns up, you've got those great lines: "Saying goodbye in their own way... playing outlawed tunes upon outlawed pipes. It was the same for me and your Daddy, when our father was killed." And then, as William considers the massive broadsword, that great line: "First -- learn to use [taps Wallace's head] this. Then -- I'll teach ye to use [raises sword] this. "
  • William gives back the thistle that Murron gave him. And to make matters worse, they throw in the sweet bagpipe love theme.
  • The rape of the unnamed bride. When her father throws himself at the English soldiers shouting that they by God will NOT, and her new husband steps in front of her, and she walks forward to give herself so they won't get hurt, drawing the soldier's blade away from her husband's throat... the look on his face. The "Do ye remember me?" speech about half an hour later is beyond satisfying.
  • After the Battle of Stirling Field.
    • Hamish whispers, "Mercy, William," and Stephen says, "Jesus Christ, man, say it."
    • And then Stephen the Mad Irishman closes his eyes, griefstricken, straight after. Way to go twisting the knife, Mel!
  • William Wallace watching his dead wife in the crowds while he is being tortured. That always got me bawling.
  • Best line of the whole movie: Robert the Bruce turns his back on the massive English army arrayed against him, and says to the others, grief-stricken, agonised: "You have bled with Wallace! ... Now bleed with me."
  • It's depressing, even if it is probably misguided.
  • In the year of our Lord, 1314, patriots of Scotland, starving and outnumbered, charged the field at Bannockburn. They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen. And won their freedom.