A Knight's War

This film is ambitious, it's atmospheric, moody and serious. The costumes are beautiful, the sets and locations are too. The cinematography, score and CGI helps with building this world, and the actors were great.

The flaws: this film needed some early critical editing to the story. There was potential for a unique fantasy world to emerge, but I think what we saw was a patch job of various narrative tropes mixed together.

I think clarity, directness, and the courage to propose/build one's own fantastical world would have had a more weighty creative impact on the viewer and it would have helped immerse oneself into someone else's imagination.

I do not want to discourage anyone from seeing this movie! It is incredibly impressive what can be done by motivated creatives, and it's still very fun. Give it a shot if you have the opportunity!

I almost didn't watch this film due to the reviews. Yet, my love for fantasy swayed my decision. I'm so glad my curiosity took over. This film is dark and moody atmospherically. For a small budget; the costume/set design/special effects were all done well. Could the actual story be more developed? Yes. That being said. By the end of this flick everything comes full circle. I personally felt the acting was fine. If you are only into big names on the screen and a 20 million dollar budget. This probably isn't for you. For me personally, this movie did everything it was supposed to. I was throughly entertained.

I was browsing through prime videos when I came across this movie. I knew it was one of those movies that was not done by a big film company and knew it was a low budget but I watched the trailer. After watching the trailer, I thought this doesn't look too bad. Then I read the reviews and I saw some reviews that reminded me of something I would write when a movie was surprisingly good when you didn't expect it. The acting and dialogue were pretty good. The gatekeepers performance was excellent and I expect to see him in other films in the future based off this performance. The male lead named Brohdie had a nice face and reminded me of a mix between Aragon and Boromir from Lord of the rings from his looks and his characteristics. The female lead named Avalon had such a great presence which made her even more beautiful. I really liked the theme of choosing the light over the darkness and whether the light exists or not. I like that they left it open for a part two. I would definitely watch if there was one. This movie entertained me more than a lot of big Budget movies have. It was the perfect amount of run time and kept my interest the whole time.

While it does have the feel of a low budget fantasy adventure (which have resulted in some real gems), there is surprising depth here. It has the standard "defeat an ancient evil" trope but has some clever twists. There is a nice mix of philisophical questioning along the way, leading you to wonder what the characters will do at the end. It's also a nice perspective of 2 heroes as opposed to the huge casts as is popular in the genre. I'm always a believer that budget doesn't necessarily define the entertainment value of a movie, this one proves that point. The world building is pretty detailed, I could see this having been a series rather than a move.

If you like Sword and Sorcery, this independent film is better than a lot of big studio swings and misses like Dungeon Siege, and not at all the unwatchable "fan fiction", like most of the other low budget attempts that are streaming right now. The visuals are great for a low budget green screen movie, and it is intelligently written. The plot would probably make a good video game. On the other hand it is still far from a perfect film. Much of the "acting" is just breathy emoting, and the plot is definitely geared towards fantasy gamers and heavy fans of sword and sorcery fiction, without much exposition, which I actually think is a good thing, but casual viewers most likely will be lost. Also, everything is played super straight, without the sense of joy that old classics like The Sword and the Sorcerer, or Krull, or even the newer movies like Forbidden Empire, are full of. But it works for what it is and is a welcome addition to the genre.

... I gave it an extra star just because good sword and sorcery films are difficult to pull off.