"The most exciting historical drama since Braveheart" the back cover boldly claims. The comparison dooms Vercengetorix from the very start, as the whole film appears to have been devised as an historical re-enactment rather than as a piece of entertainment, and is much more suited to being continuously played in one of those theatrettes that people walk in and out of at tourist attractions, and not your televison screen at home.
There's no characterisation to speak of, and events are so choppily thrown together that you'd have to be history buff to have much idea of what's actually going on (particularly in the first half of the movie).
I don 't understand, and I do not like what I don't understand.
Christophe tries very hard, and does okay in a few of those big speeches (I'm sure he had a chuckle at the 'do you want to live forever?' speech), but ultimately he's miscast.
He's not big and brutish enough - and add in his silly wig and moustache - fails to look imposing among the other actors.
Of course, we don't actually have any reason to believe that Vercengetorix is a great warrior or leader. He waltzes in to some hut and thrusts a spear straight through an unarmed old man.
And during the big battles all he does is wander around gawping at everybody else and looking grim.
What a legend!
Of the other main cast-members, Max von Sydow is wasting his time, while Ines Sastre does little besides smiling blandly, which she does very well.
Only Klaus Maria Brandeur is well-served, as th only memorable lines in the script are given to him.
His accent didn't concern me, and he made a good Caesar - whenever he's the focus, the movie is quite enjoyable.
Vercengetorix was shot on a low-budget apparently, but it doesn't really show it all that often - the costuming, and attention to detail with props is very impressive - when bad hiarcuts and moustaches aren't on screen, it's a great film to look at.
Vercengetorix/Druids has been sitting on the bottom #100 of the Internet Movie DataBase for quite a while now, and since it's release poor Christophe has been looked at as a bit of a joke in France - a situation he attempted to remedy in his recent films 'Janis et John' and 'A ton image.' (Unfortunatly there's no subtitled version of either available that I know of :( )
He succeeded to some extent critically, but neither was overly successful at the box-office.
With it's impressive cast, and interesting subject matter Vercengetorix could have been a fantastic movie - as it is, it is a pretty bad movie that still manages to be sporadically entertaining to those who enjoy historical sword-fighting type films.
Max von Sydow
Ines Sastre
