Braveheart isn't quite the worst film ever to win Best Picture but it is the most inexplicable. it was not a critical success and despite all of the cheers about in retrospect it wasn't a box office one - it only made $60 millions after three separate releases and that still wasn't enough to make up its budget. It didn't do well at any major critics awards or the Golden Globes. Everybody was kind of shcoked when it took best Picture, even if I remember correctly Mel Gibson.

Here are some of the films released in 1995 that could've been nominated for Best Picture instead of Braveheart but weren't

Get Shorty

The Usual Suspects

Dead Man Walking

Leaving Las Vegas (Roger Ebert considered it one of the Best Films ever made)

The American President (one of my all time favorites)

Casino (actually better than it was given credit for at the time

SeVen (another of Ebert's all time Greats)

All of these films are better written, directed and acted than Braveheart and far less pretentious. Even SeVen is far less violent than Braveheart and far more intellectually stimulating. Why Braveheart won Best Picture is hard for me to comprehend. Why so many people love it a quarter of a century later, even harder and that's BEFORE everything we would learn about Mel Gibson