Medieval

Medieval is helped by a restrained yet captivating performance from Ben Foster. Even better is the production design and costumes; it's a very good-looking, immersive, realistic production.

It's a film that has some impressive moments of intense action and several compelling scenes. But the film can't help but crumble under the weight of its convoluted storytelling.

The plot revolves around a soldier caught in the midst of the political scheming between two brothers who seek to be emperor, and how he and those he leads are forced to suffer the consequences of their scheming.

When I put it that way, it sounds simple; but that's not how it plays out on screen.

The films does a lamentably poor job of establishing its multiple antagonists and their respective loyalties, motivations, and especially how they seek to achieve their goals.

This is largely due in part to an absurd amount of name-dropping that gets difficult to follow. There are certain characters whose names are crucial to the plot but these characters themselves are rarely, and sometimes never, seen.

It's unclear what role everyone is playing in the story because there are so many people to keep track of and the script doesn't properly develop any of them.

Not even the action is particularly exciting. It's mostly clumsily filmed and opaquely edited, leaving the impact of every sword swing and arrow pierce off screen. It's action without weight or a sense of significance.

By the end of the movie, I felt nothing, because the story concludes without anything of note having changed for either the characters or for the political situation we've been following.

It's a largely dull experience without clear stakes and without clear goals and without any meaningful depth of character or theme.

I see why there was virtually no marketing for this whatsoever.

Since two decades now, medieval movies from Europe, Eastern Europe are galore, more gruesome one than the other, huge budgets for huge craps most of the time, available mainly un streaming platforms. Most of those lousy productions bet only on gruesome battles, bloody, brutal, battle scenes, where cruelty is the main word. Besides this, nothing at all, bad directing and I don't even speak of the acting. This one is from Czech Republic but seems to be co produced with UK film industry; it is spoken in English and stars Ben Foster and Michael Caine. So, it won't be a surprise if I say it is not for the sissies, it is bloody, with man details concerning meat chopper fight sequences. But the story is not that bad for such a film, not that bad. However, it will never make me forget THE WARLORD, starring Chuck Heston; FLESH AND BLOOD from director Paul Verhoeven, or any Ridley Scott's movie for this scheme.

I love Ben Foster. I think he chooses excellent movies.

I could maybe make out 30% of the dialogue in this movie. The audio is absolutely atrocious. The acting is good, the cinematography is great... So the fact that you simply cannot understand any dialogue is beyond glaring. It's not even the accents. If the dialogue isn't being drowned out by the unnecessary loud and booming bass, the spoken words are just unintelligible. I cannot believe a movie with this kind of cast would have these kind of issues.

There were also several spots with obvious editing issues. Where the characters mouth did not match up with the words the audience was hearing. Which just goes to show that no one who produced this movie bothered to actually watch it. Amateur stuff.

With a plot that is already hard to follow as others have mentioned, these issues made the movie nearly unwatchable. Super disappointed.

Unlike most of the negative low ratings against this movie that almost made me decide to not viewing it and, even when I finally decided to give it a try, my expectation was still not quite high enough to give it a full shot. But this movie turned out to be pretty good actually. Yes, this movie got a serious audio and soundtrack problems. The dialog between or among the characters sometimes was too low or too vague to be heard clearly, and most of the time was blocked by the annoying loud soundtrack which supposedly should be in the background and subtle enough to support the ongoing of the story, but sadly, the music often played too loud and over-the-top dominant over the scenes, and lot of times too religiously annoying. It also made me wonder if the production team hired a qualified enough audio professional group to handle the recording or microphone. It seems that there were lot of times, the microphone was placed either too far away or too high to record the characters dialog so that always ended up either too vague or too low to be heard clearly. The crew who took care of the audio part of this movie should never be hired by any other movie makers in case to cause the similar problems.

There are so many negative reviews against this movie, but to me, it's a decent and seriously made one, at least worth watching once for your time and money. Ben Foster did a very good job, but the screenplay didn't give him too much to develop and show the character he played. Michael Caine also faithfully did his part, even it's such a weightless role. Sophie Lowe also acted well for her tragic role in this movie, but luckily, her character was much well developed as the storyline went on.

The fighting scenes are well arranged, brutal, bloody and realistic enough to make you cringe sometimes. Again, the faulty audio almost ruined everything!

If you like films about the Middle Ages, then this one is worth the watch. Yes, it is much like other films in this genre (blood and guts and a little bit of a love story), but the director did a great job with angles and sequence and speed. Being based on true events, the storyline in Medieval is unique, as well. Ben Foster leads the film well, and the supporting cast, especially Sophie Lowe and Michael Caine do a nice job. It's not a movie that I will watch over and over again, but it was well worth the watch in the theater, and I'm sure I will watch it at least one more time when it hits the digital market.