flickaddict

As a student of Medieval history and literature I really enjoyed this film. Not because of the intriguing plot (there is none) of the in-depth exploration of the characters (none either), but because I kept laughing my ass of!

It could have been so awesome. I mean, using the Celtic Arthurian legend for a change (I for one am more a fan of those than of the rather tame, overly romantic French stories of later date) sounded great to me. Trailer looked cool as well. Clive Owen is an actor I already really liked (after seeing him in Bent and Croupier), as is Stellan Skarsgard. So what went wrong....??

EVERYTHING! They just couldn't get ANY even remotely historical or literary aspect of this period and legend right! * Saxons invading from the North (and a couple of centuries too early as well) * A Pope as the head of the Roman Church * A bunch of late-Medieval French knights with famous names disguised as "Sarmatians" from God-knows-where * A table with no clear purpose (which, I must admit, was round) * A crazy wizard-who-wasn't-a-wizard with no clear purpose (although, I must admit, he was called Merlin) * A bunch of blue "Woads" who were also "Britons" (I got really confused here, as the Britons were just one of the Celtic tribes, but here the word "Briton" seemed to be synonymous for "Celt" as in "indigenous inhabitant or Britain") * A never fully explored sword-in-burial mount-theme (I must admit, a boy pulled it out of something and it was called Excalibur) * A guy with a stupid Italian accent (signifying him as being a Roman) living in a Roman villa complete with Mediterranean poplar trees, NORTH of Hadrians Wall (???). Did he have some kind of death-wish? * A half-naked, starved Kiera warrior princess pretending to be a Celtic Boadicae, French Guinevere and Maximus the Gladiator all at the same time * A Lancelot who served no purpose but looking good and moaning to Arthur about going home (while stroking a mummified rat, of whatever it was) * A steamy lovescene that wasn't steamy but blue and boring * A Christian Arthur who marries Boadicae/Guinevere/Maximus in a polystyrene Stonehenge near the coast (??), while being blessed by some Welsh-sounding druid wannabe (at least he pronounced the name of Guinevere the right way, since this is supposed to be the Celtic Guinevere) * Mount Badon being near Hadrians Wall (??) * Mysterious doors that need to be opened the fist time by 2 horses, to open all by themselves after that (maybe they had some unseen cave-trolls on top of the wall...) * Clive Owen uttering the most incredibly cheesy dialogue I have ever heard. "Mark my face, Saxon, for it will be the last thing you see on this earth" -sigh-.... I was constantly thinking "this movie could have been remotely enjoyable, if Arthur would just look rugged and SHUT HIS MOUTH". I got the impression Mr. Owen was a bit ashamed of being in this film as well (at least he looked like it) * Stellan Skarsgard doing even worse, confusing muttering one-word-phrases like "burn" and "kill" in a low American accent with being fearsome. He looked half asleep the entire time!

and so on and so on.....

This could have been a great movie in the tradition of Gladiator (a movie which actually had a PLOT). The sets looked cool (better than those obvious CGI soldiers and ships in Troy). But what this film missed was a plot, a cool hero (sorry Mr. Owen), a cool soundtrack (please stop copy-pasting from your own previous work, Mr.Zimmer) and blood (this film has the most bloodless battles I have ever seen in a period film. Gladiator is a regular blood-fest compared to this one!).

Enjoyable if you want to spend an evening laughing, but could have been much, much, much better (if, say, Ridley Scott had directed it and Clive Owen had just kept his mouth shut).

OK, I just saw The Passion of the Christ, and left the cinema with very mixed feelings....

I really wanted to like this film. I've not been brought up religious and I don't believe in a God in the way he is portrayed in the Bible. But I do believe that someone like Jesus (or with a different name, that doesn't matter) really existed in those times, and that this man spread a message of love that touched enough people in his time to have that message recorded in historical documents (I'm not saying "in the Bible" because for me the Bible is just 1 historical document among countless others).

So, I expected to see a film about this man and about his message of peace and love. And yes, I knew that "passion" meant "suffering", so I expected a lot of blood and pain as well. But somehow, this film didn't really "do it" for me emotionally. Unfortunately, I hardly got to see this man. The best scene for me was the one where Jesus is building a table and joking with his mother. Only in that scene did he become a human being to me, more than just being reduced to a bleeding body.

Also the storyline, even though it followed the Bible close enough (and yes, I've read the Bible, even though I'm not a Christian) was in my opinion very fragmented. I didn't get a sense of a flowing storyline at all. I just saw one beautiful picture (picture in the sense of "painting") after another rolling by, without something to glue all those nice pictures together. The message of Jesus could have been that glue for me, but the emphasis clearly wasn't on his message in this film.

At the crucifixion scene I became more emotionally involved, but only then and only at the scene where he cries out "why have you forsaken me?". That was a very strong scene, even for a non-religious viewer like myself. And the single "tear" from the sky, I liked that very much as well.

As for the gore; hey, crucifixions where nasty, and so was flogging! But a little less gore would have worked just as well I think. As well as a little less slow-motion. Slow-motion is OK, but in this film all the slow-motion scenes had D R A M A spelled out all over them in big, bright letters.

My biggest fear is that most viewers will accept this film to be historically accurate. The Bible is NOT an accurate historical document! It has been edited and re-edited over and over through the ages, and scholars (mostly) agree that there has been more than 1 "editor". OK, Romans did flog and crucify people, and yes, that was nasty. But I've spoken to people who now believe that the Romans where a savage people of drunk brutes... Please, read a decent history book on Roman society (and Jewish society and religion in those times as well) before you accept everything Mel Gibson dishes out here as the historical truth!!

My over all impression of the film was a range of scenes (quite beautifully shot, I must admit), but without a coherent structure and without a Jesus as a man with emotions, depth, warmth, a message. James Caviezel did a good job though, looking very kind and handsome in the flashback scenes and very, well, suffering in the rest of the film. He did look like Jesus as I always imagined him (only his eyes had a strange light brownish color... must be the contact lenses or digital grading) and expressing so much pain through only 1 eye I imagine is very difficult for an actor. The pacing was very slow at times as well. I was genuinely bored to death when Jesus fell down in slow-motion while carrying the cross (for what felt like the 50th time....).

I give this film *** out of *****.