10 Greatest Eve-of-Battle Movie Speeches
What is the point of a movie if it doesn’t move us to tears or laughter? If it doesn’t take us down to a valley of despair only to raise us back up to the highest heights?
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.
‘Inches’ Speech – Al Pacino in ‘Any Given Sunday’
SPEECHMAKER: Coach Tony D’Amato (Al Pacino)
Title: Inches
OCCASION: Pre-game Team Talk. A big game looms at the end of a gruelling and momentous season in which all the players and coach have been through many trials and tribulations, ups and downs. Al Pacino’s character in particular as the central protagonist of the story has been through a lot by the time he comes to give the speech.
Date: The movie came out in 1999 but no particular date is given in the movie
Length of speech in time & words: 478 words; 4 minutes. As with all great speeches, it is short.
Audience: His (American) football team
Central Truth: That the difference between winning & losing is just a matter of inches. So they must all fight together as a team.
Type: Motivational Speech
Theme: Fight tooth & nail to gain every last inch on the pitch and in life.
Tone: I have always practised what I am preaching. Fighting for every last inch.
Specific purposes: To motivate his players to give everything to win.
General purposes: To foster a sense of team spirit.
Personal purposes: To show his players he is in the fight right with them.
Opening: 4 Stars.
“I don’t know what to say really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives”
He takes a very low key beginning in terms of his tone and could probably have done without the initial preface ‘I don’t know what to say really’, but setting out the context ‘biggest battle of our professional lives’ already sets his whole speech up for a stirring battle cry.
The aim of an opening is to immediately engage your audience and he does this by tapping into the macho instinct his players have for battle.
Introduction: 5 stars.
The aim of an introduction is to get the audience ready for the Main Body of the speech. Here he does this by setting out the options that they have:
“Either we heal as a team or we are going to crumble… we can stay here and get the shit kicked out of us or we can fight our way back into the light.”
His introduction presents his team with the choice that he will go on to talk about in his Main Body. This is the perfect introduction as it perfectly creates the context for the rest of the speech and the main messages. By suggesting those are the only two choices, he allows himself to achieve the inevitable conclusion that they must fight together as a team.
Main Body: 5 stars.
So having set out the context and their choices, he goes on to say give them the reasons and motives for why they should take up the fight to win, rather than just amble along or give in. Here he uses himself as an example, talking about having wasted his money, how he is getting old and how with age things get taken away from you. He also introduces what will be the theme and central message of the speech.
“Life is just a game of inches”
He equates football with life deliberately to elevate his speech and the motivation to more than just another football game but about the essence of life itself. On the one hand such a grandiose principle might be said to be a little above a bunch of football players, but in the context of the movie and what has led them to that moment, it touches a nerve for all the players.
“one half step too late or to early you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow or too fast and you don’t quite catch it.”
With this statement he is reminding them of the consequences of not giving your best. Failure.
Then he moves to galvanise the team with the central message of the speech. Instead of asking them to be a team that fights, he boldly tells them that this is what they are as a team. This is classic inspirational and motivational speechmaking. The late Steve Jobs of Apple had a similar trick, which was referred to as the ‘reality distortion field’ ie you just tell your team that they are or are capable of being what you are trying to get them to be as though it is an undeniable truth and often they will live up to that standard.
“On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves, and everyone around us to pieces for that inch. We CLAW with our finger nails for that inch. Cause we know
when we add up all those inches that’s going to make the fucking difference between WINNING and LOSING between LIVING and DYING.”
Very powerful stuff.
Conclusion: 5 stars.
Now he moves to cement the spirit that he has evoked in his team, telling them it is the guy who will die for that inch that wins. Most importantly he asks them to
“look at the guy next to you. Look into his eyes. Now I think you are going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. You are going to see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team because he knows when it comes down to it, you are gonna do the same thing for him.”
And during his speech all his players, even the ones who have resisted him up to that point in the movie, do look at each other and bond.
This is classic leadership and management. He gets his team to want to work for each other relying on the trust that is implicit in every great team, that the other guy will go the distance as much as you.
Closing: 3 stars
He closes with an invitation to his players rather than a battle cry.
“That’s a team, gentlemen. and either we heal now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That’s football guys.That’s all it is. Now, whattaya gonna do?”
This is probably the weakest part of the speech and feels slightly like there might have been one or two more lines to it, that were left on the cutting room floor.
On the one hand a low key closing is the mark of a strong leader, because he takes the focus away from himself as the coach and onto the players themselves. Asking them what they are going to do, throws the onus on them to take responsibility and be the leaders that he is asking them to be.
But following such an inspiration speech that focused on the importance of putting team above individual and using football as a metaphor for life, a stronger grander finish might have been expected. Nevertheless the calmness of the closing perfectly mirrors the measured tones of the opening, which gives it a symmetry that is the halmark of every great speech.
Delivery:
His tone is humble and low key initially. This is particularly important because in the context of the movie, his players do need to see humility where he has not shown it before.
But no Al Pacino speech would be complete without a bit of fire and he certainly varies his tone as appropriate througout the speech, which is important.
This speech is the perfect template for any motivational talk and team briefing:
- set out the context
- identify the options and consequences of the choices to be made
- talk up your team by telling them they already have what it takes
- invite them to take personal responsibility for themselves and each other
- ask them to go the extra mile and tell them why it counts
- show them you are right in the fight with them
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