Tristan & Isolde
"Before Romeo & Juliet, there was..."

Reviewer: Rich
Review date: 24/04/2006
Film genre: Action, Historical
Director: Kevin Reynolds
Starring: James Franco, Sophia Myles, Rufus Sewell

The film
I love a good historical actioner, and pleasingly, that was exactly what I got with Tristan & Isolde. Disappointingly overlooked and forgotten about in the US, I felt it was worth a shot and it turned out to be hugely enjoyable. The film has been criticised for looking rather drab, but I liked it as it just felt realistic (it was set in the dark ages after all), and reminded me of Rohan in The Lord of the Rings. A definite plus point for me was that it was not obsessed with scale; for me, the downfall of many recent historical epics has been the eschewing of an engaging personal story to make way for huge battle scenes (just see Troy, King Arthur et al). There still was a good amount of satisfying action here though without needing to resort to CGI. In fact, I thought the whole film was excellent, with the only slight hiccup being that the first meeting of the two title characters is brought about by a huge coincidence. I was pleasantly surprised by James Franco's performance, and Sophia Myles was superb as Isolde. For me, considerably better than director Kevin Reynolds' earlier Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and that was a big hit in its day. There's no justice in the film business.

The summary
Tristan & Isolde is a surprisingly good historical action flick set in a period that's not often portrayed in films. Worth seeing.

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