Braveheart

"Hello. My name is William Wallace. You killed my father (and my brother and my wife and possibly my uncle for all I know). Prepare to die."
The story goes that King Longshanks Of England took over Scotland when their king died and thought it was a nice place but didn't like that it was full of Scottish people. So he put forth pro-military laws in an attempt to make everybody in Scotland dead. Good ol' William Wallace took all of this personally. He said "My heart is braver than your shanks are long!" Then he rallyed everybody in Scotland to join his Roaring Rampage Of Revenge.
I'm still trying to decide how I feel about Braveheart. I think it was an overall positive reaction, but I am depressed now. And I have a headache.
The movie is quite long, but there's nothing in it that could really be taken out. And it doesn't really feel like it takes three hours to watch, so that's all right.
The battle scenes were exciting, but too many of them required the death of innocent horses. Kill each other all you want, but the horses can't help who their riders pledge allegiance to! Leave them out of it!
My favorite character was a guy I like to call Crazy Irish Steven, who claims he talks to the almighty, but I think he's actually just psychic. I think Braveheart could have done with more Crazy Irish Steven.
Patrick McGoohan looked very old (which was the point I guess; he was playing a king who was dying of "oldness in the 1300s") but he still had the same eyes, and he was still the baddest motherfucker ever to be called "Longshanks." He shouted, slapped his son around and threw a guy out a damn window. And he had the one line in the movie that made me laugh out loud: "Bring me Wallace. Alive, if possible. Dead ... just as good."
I miss the days before Mel Gibson went crazy. I'd like to think he could bring himself back from the brink, but if some of the things I've heard about him are true (like that he's one of those "the Holocaust didn't happen" people), there may be no hope. Which is too bad, 'cause this was a really good movie.
Braveheart was different than I was expecting it to be. I thought it would be boring, which is why I never bothered to watch it before. I blame that on the fact that it won a lot of Oscars. I assumed it was going to be a lot of heavy, soggy drama and scenes of people talking about heavy, soggy drama stuff. And, sure, there was some of that (mainly near the end when you're starting to get tired and you're realizing how bad of a headache you've got so you're barely paying attention anyway) but mostly it kept up a good pace and there were a lot of kickass action scenes.
I always claim I don't like war movies, but apparently I'm okay with war movies that take place before there were guns.
So I really liked most of the movie although, like I said, I developed a headache midway through and my attention shifted from the movie to "ow, my head!" But it did get my attention back eventually.
And now I'm kinda depressed.
I should've kept focusing on my headache.

End of line.
-Sally