Tear Jerker / Braveheart

• Longshanks has a depressing role in this movie that has been probably misguided.
• 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 his uncle's sword, 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.
  • The primae noctis scene. Historically accurate it isn't, but the moment where the bride goes to her husband and mouths "I'll be okay; everything will be okay"? Still pretty heartwrenching to watch.
• After Murron gets captured, she desperately looks around, hoping that Wallace will storm in and stop the English soldiers. He doesn't, and so she's executed.
• Wallace's face as he executes the Magistrate the same way Murron was killed. After all's said and done, the woman he's always loved is still dead.
• Robert the Bruce's remorse over backstabbing Wallace at Falkirk, as he explains to his father:
  Robert the Bruce: Men fight for me, because if they do not, I throw them off my lands and I starve their wives and children. But those men, who bled the ground red at Falkirk, they fight for William Wallace, and he fights for something that I've never had... And I took it from him, when I betrayed him, and I saw it in his face on the battlefield! And it's tearing me apart...
  Bruce the Elder: All men betray. All lose heart.
  Robert the Bruce: I DON'T WANT TO LOSE HEART! ...I want to believe, as he does!
  • If seeing sincere heartbreak on Wallace's face wasn't enough for Bruce to have regret for his actions. Than the scene of him walking though all the dead bodies sure was.
• Campbell's death after Falkirk. Made all the worse with his final words to Hamish, and his son's weeping over him when he finally passes. Manly Tears can and will ensue...
  Campbell: I'm dyin', boy.
  Hamish: No... You're going to live.
  Campbell: I've lived long enough to live free. Proud... to see you become the man you are. I'm a happy man...
• Robert the Bruce's realisation that he's unwittingly led Wallace into a trap.
• Wallace's last interaction with Hamish becomes Parting-Words Regret after the former is captured. After scoffing at what he sees as Wallace's misguided reasons for leading the rebellion, Hamish decks him and storms off. The next time Hamish sees Wallace is from the crowd at the latter's brutal torture and execution. So the very last memory of his best friend will be harsh words and a punch.
• Overlapping with heartwarming, Hamish and Stephen in the crowd at Wallace's execution. They know their friend is going to die, they know he will be put through hell first, they know a spectacle will be made of his torture, and they know they can do nothing to save him. Yet they still go, simply so that Wallace doesn't die alone, even if he doesn't know they're there.
• As Wallace is being executed, taunted by the magistrate with the prospect of a quick death if he just pleads for mercy, tortured to the point where even the English crowd starts calling for it, his two best friends watching in secret make it clear that they wouldn't think any less of him for taking the offer...
  Hamish: Mercy, William...
  Stephen: Jesus Christ man, say it.
  • And then Stephen the Mad Irishman closes his eyes, grief-stricken, straight after. Way to go twisting the knife, Mel!
• As Wallace is about to die, he sees the recently dead Murron in the crowd, and he smiles at her as the axe comes down on him.
• 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."
• 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.

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