Umm...yeah.
Where to begin? Well, Jeremy Irons did NOT play a bad guy, which is refreshing and you had to listen hard to the king to hear Edward Norton's muffled voice (he was the Man in the Iron Mask for the whole movie). Qui Gon was in full form and Alexander Siddig was wonderful, as usual. Oh, and Professor Lupin is EVERYwhere!
Other than that, it was just kind of blah. The battle scenes were a good example of medieval war tactics and weapons. There were trebuchets, archers, liquid fire, tar wells, and lots and lots of swords. I think this was meant to be a character study and kind of fell on its face. Orlando Bloom is a French blacksmith (that's two smithy roles he's played) who is reeling from his child's death and wife's suicide in the first five minutes. The next five minutes are spent finding out that Qui Gon is his dad, and the next five minutes after that are spent torching his blacksmith workshop, killing a friar, and joining up with his dad's friends on their little trip. He's a busy little bee. No mulling it over, no asking himself if he really wants to go in to battle with a father he doesn't know, no going to the post office to stop the mail. He just goes. Did I mention he's an impulsive little bee, too?
Dad gives son his first swordfighting lesson and, evidently, that's enough to turn him in to a mighty warrior and supreme military strategist for the rest of the movie. Dad dies, makes son a knight with a rather stirring knighting ceremony speech that I must find the transcription of and calligraph. On his way from Messina to Jerusalem, the ship capsizes in a storm and disentigrates. Somehow he survives and is within riding distance across a desert from Jerusalem. There's all sorts of drama and action between then and the final battle scene, including Mr. Perfect Knight sleeping with another man's wife (how very Lancelot of him). He shapes up with a 20-guys-versus-an-army stand to buy time for civilians to get to Jerusalem before the big battle and he rallies the people once they're inside to a long, bloody, elaborately staged battle with the Seracens. It's meant to be a thrilling battle against unbeatable odds, but I just found it a fierce battle between my interest in the medieval tactics, my brain wondering how in the hell a blacksmith became a brilliant tactician so quickly, and my bladder insisting that I bail for the bathroom NOW! |
