BRAVERHEART
OUTLAW KING AIMS TO SET RECORD STRAIGHT
The new Netflix movie launches on Friday and is the first time Bruce’s story has been properly told on screen. Oscar-nominated Mackenzie felt it unfair the Bruce’s successes were being overlooked. He said: “Braveheart had cast Robert as someone hovering in the background, and although the film ends with Robert doing battle, it’s kind of a footnote. “The romantic glorious failure of William Wallace has eclipsed the true strategic brilliance of Robert the Bruce and part of the reason we want to tell the story is to right the wrong of that balance. “He’s also a national hero who went r ight down to the bottom and pulled himself up, unified his divided country, gathered strength and threw out a tyrannical occupation – that is a strong story but strangely had never been told.”
Outlaw King is Scotland’s biggest- ever home-grown film and stars Chris Pine as The Bruce, Little Drummer Girl Florence Pugh, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Tony Curran and Stephen Dillane as well as Braveheart’s James Cosmo and Still Game’s Boaby the barman, Gavin Mitchell.
The story starts where Braveheart left off, the surrender of the nobles to Edward I at the Battle of Falkirk in 1298.
But while Mel Gibson’s 1995 Oscar winner had Bruce as a ditherer, Outlaw King shows him as a guerilla leader.
Mackenzie said only one scene was f i lmed in England, in Berwick-uponTweed, where a quarter of Wallace of his body was sent after his execution. He added: “It was shot entirely in Scotland apart from that little visit to England.”