The Eve of Battle Motivational Speech is one of those defining moments in movies. The soldiers are about to head into a momentous battle. There is no guarantee of victory (except that we know our heroes will always win) and the forces of evil seem overwhelmingly strong.

It’s a moment that calls for leadership and powers of motivation and oratory, to instil them with courage and fortitude and to inspire them to give more of themselves than they believe possible.

Here are our pick of the Top Ten Eve of Battle Speeches in movies:

10. Independence Day (Bill Pullman)

OK, the movie may be sentimental twaddle, but this address to his people in the face of the alien invasion is the stand out moment. Bill Pullman having been a pretty ineffectual President through the movie suddenly raises his game to deliver some inspirational words that help to turn the battle against the invaders. That and some typically brazen bravado from Will Smith.

9. 300 (David Wenham)

Though the action in this movie is superbly cinematic, one of the most played non-action clips was the speech at the end of the movie following the death of King Leonidas and his 300 brave warriors. His right hand man, Dilios, uses the great example of his King’s death to rally the entire army to face the Greek tyrant King Xerxes.

8. Glory (Morgan Freeman)

An epic war movie featuring the first African American soldiers in the US Union army. Here Morgan Freeman (surely a man with one of the greatest actor voices in modern movie history) reminds his fellow soldiers of their place in history. He draws on the tradition of the Baptist preacher and implores his men to fight for pride, for their families and for their people.

7. Tilbury Speech (Ann Marie Duff)

“I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and a king of England too” – possibly the most powerful words ever spoken by a Queen. Though there is some dispute over the exact wording of Queen Elizabeth 1′s speech at Tilbury to her troops, this transcript is generally accepted as the most likely and one can only imagine the incredible impact it must have had on the soldiers to be addressed in so forthright and stirring a manner by a female sovereign.

6. Colonel Tim Collins Iraq Speech (Kenneth Branagh)

Though this is not a speech from a movie, Kenneth Branagh delivers an understated but authentic performance of the speech to his troops by Colonel Tim Collins at the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The text of this speech hung on the walls of the Oval Office in the White House. It was a call to his troops to fight hard but with honour and respect.

5. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King  (Viggo Mortensen)

At the final battle of a remarkable trilogy, King Aragorn addresses his soldiers, who are small in number and facing an overwhelming and evil force. It is short (slightly Shakespearean) but powerful. And of course, they go on to win with a little help from a little Hobbit at Mount Doom.

4. Glengarry Glen Ross (Alec Baldwin)

Though not a time of actual war, this tour de force was given by Alec Baldwin to his lowly staff members faced with a struggling market in which they were fighting to save their jobs by closing the most sales. He is odious, rude and obnoxious, but incredibly compelling. He doesn’t go for the ‘inspire your people’ option so much as the ‘instil the fear of God in them’ route. In the circumstances, it is highly effective.

3. Henry V (Kenneth Branagh)

Kenneth Branagh and Shakespeare go together like Ham and Cheese and in his eve of battle speech to his heavily outnumbered soldiers at the battle of Agincourt, Henry V delivers the most famous battle speech of all of Shakespeare’s plays. It is from this speech that we get the phrase ‘We happy few, we band of brothers’. And in Branagh, we are given the quintessential Shakespearean performance.

2. Braveheart (Mel Gibson)

Dodgy Scottish accent aside, Mel Gibson’s turn as William Wallace is absorbing and this speech to his young Scottish warriors faced with their age-old enemy, the English, is dramatic as it is hair-raising. The blue face paint no doubt helped.

1. Any Given Sunday (Al Pacino)

This is just motivation at its finest. Though the movie itself is forgettable, Al Pacino never is. And in this moment, his delivery has never been stronger. Even if most of us will never experience the thrill of the locker room before an American Football game, for the moment when Pacino talks about “inches” being the difference between winning and losing, between living and dying, we are all right there in the thick of the action with him and the guys. Brilliant!

Send us any other suggestions you have.

The ‘Great Speech’ Consultancy

www.greatpeech.co

My loving people

We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood even, in the dust.

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.

I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and We do assure you in the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.

The Royal Diaries: Elizabeth I

My interest in Elizabethan England was first sparked when I was much younger, after reading a novel which presents a fictionalized account of Queen Elizabeth I’s childhood. I felt I could sympathize with the hardships of the young queen’s life through the diary-entry writing style, and ever since then I have been interested in learning more – especially historically accurate information.

There are also several films based on the life of Queen Elizabeth, the most recent of which that I have seen being Queen Elizabeth I: The Golden Age. The fictionality of the movies is to be expected of course, but whether the Queen is depicted realistically or more favourably by Hollywood standards, one thing remains the same: she always embodies the fierce intelligence and strength that she is known for. The following clip is an example of how I would imagine the passionate speech to have taken place.

Maybe it’s just my affinity to the “Hollywood” style of representation, but I find that this speech rather than giving voice to contradiction is a valiant and honest effort to motivate her people. Unlike James who consistently raises issues of aporia based on his fears unknowingly, I believe (or am biased in thinking) that Elizabeth was perfectly aware of the implications of her words. I’m sure there are many criticisms that can be made about artistic license in these films but I’ve always been a fan of historical dramas.

The Kings Speech

Another example of the importance of being a great speaker, this film details the life of King George VI and the stuttering problem that prevents him from providing the needed assurance to his people. With the declaration of war, the King must make one of his most important speeches. This is yet another way in which the ruler must struggle to establish a strong facade to present to the gaze of the public. Self-Dissimulation (creating a false impression by separating actions from intent) would have been even more difficult to accomplish when the “brave front” is subjected to something beyond their control – like a speech impediment.

Elizabeth R. has been blackballed from this year’s D-Day commemorations in Normandy — and the fact that Obama and Sarkozy, who disinvited her, are both socially lower than a snake’s belly only adds insult to injury.  My apologies for linking to the Upper West Side Slimes, Jayson Blair’s far-left birdcage liner of record, but they were first to break this story stateside I believe.  The Daily Mail’s take: “Palace fury as Sarkozy refuses to invite royals to 65th Anniversary,” with appropriate details about that Glaswegian tub of guts Gordo Brown’s complicity in the snub.

One hates to say “I told you so,” especially to borderline lèse-majesté, but lie down with dogs and you get fleas. Conservatives warned back in April that Her Majesty shouldn’t receive Calypso Barry and Miss Hell Obomber, but noblesse oblige evidently got the better of her.  The monarch should have taken a leaf from her feisty grandson, Prince Harry, who as your humble servant noted back in January seems blissfully uncorrupted by multiculturalist (i.e. anti-European) agitprop.

Pictured above: The First Dragqueen rubs the Royal Person with her great galumphing paw of a man-hand, as she might another transvestite during some crack-fuelled lip-synch of “I Will Survive.”

Really, to paraphrase Sir Alan Clark’s wife, you can expect this sort of thing when you have below-stairs Anglophobes round for drinks.  QEI, Gloriana, the virgin Bride of England, wouldn’t have boarded her least-favorite dog with the Obamas, let alone spoken to them socially.

Elizabeth I, the Rainbow Portrait: “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.”

And Sarkozy? A glorified fishmonger.

Voici M. la Grenouille-en-Chef avec sa putain — you know, Carla Bruni, the dopey slut who recently dragged her name into the headlines by sassing the Patriarch of Rome on the Christian teaching against contraception.  A subject with which she’s become most intimately familiar, perforce, during long years spent screwing her bowlegged way to the Élysée Palace.  In this photo, her legs are kept from flying apart only by Sarko’s crushing grip, inherited from his gold-grasping cit forebears, who knew to pinch a penny ’til it squeaked:

And that great, rawboned, Korean toaster of a head — can it be Bruni’s a drag queen too?