A Revelação

I'll start by admitting that `Revelation' had me completely fooled. It had so many elements of the mega best seller `The DaVinci Code' that I assumed it was a quick knockoff to capitalize on the popularity of the book. It certainly feels like it was thrown together far too quickly. But since the movie came out well before the book, I'll assume this is an original mess. It is instructive to see how it is possible to take exactly the same elements and arrange them into an enjoyable book, which frankly some people are taking way too seriously, or totally incoherent movie.

Actually there are a lot of decent elements here. In addition to interesting historical background, the acting, dialog, and production values are better than average for this genre.

But in the end all of this is wasted in a confusing and pointless plot. Nothing could recover from a story this bad.

For a film so obviously ripped from the pages of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", and the loathsome-but-funny "Templar Revelation", this film takes itself way too seriously. I guess with the bogus "Da Vinci Code" selling more than the bible nowadays, there's a market for so-called occult themed films, but honestly; even in films, it stretches credulity when "experts" of religious iconography are astonished at the fact that the egyptian ankh and the symbol of venus bears more than a passing resemblance. Or for that matter, when Sir Isaac Newton, in his monologue address himself as "I, Newton...". Oh, the pomposity! And then there's the matter of the phantom-ninja-templar-assassins and the apparently undying Udo Kier, whose strange powers are really never explained (except that they're EVIIIIL). Still, see it with a couple of like-minded friends for a good laugh (preferably with a couple of beers), but if your mind is liable to be "blown away", and you "really start thinking" by some self-important references to knight templars and goddess-worship; do us all a favor and rent Dr.Doolittle instead.

This movie will stand as a functional litmus test for years to come. People will be able to see how others react and measure them by their reaction.

For there is no doubt that this is one of the worst movies ever made. It could be signed Ed Wood but it's too poor for even that - it's more like artificial wood.

It's always hard to single out one culprit when a movie is so painfully embarrassingly poor as this one, and to concoct a product in this extreme category takes the contributions and lack of talent of thousands. Was it the writer? Undoubtedly. Was it the idiot who came up with this idiotic story line? Assuredly? Was it the direction? What direction? Was it the editor? Yes - but what material did the editor Julian Rodd have to work with? And so forth. Everyone can be blamed, and anyone can point a finger at someone else - and they should have been doing a lot of that by now.

You will search long and hard for a movie as amateurish as this. Not only is there no continuity in the storytelling, the editing looks like it's been done by an orangutan drunk on absinthe. And when I say bad, you're probably thinking, 'oh that bad is it?' but you would have missed the point. For it's worse. Whatever you're thinking or imagining, think and imagine worse - far worse - and still you won't be close. Did they ever get away with things like this in your kindergarten film school? Nope - kids this bad, be they only 3 - 5 years old, were sent home to their parents and put on bread and water. Get the picture now?

In fact the only redeeming feature of this movie - and the only reason we were able to view it and thus review it - was the head of the cast Natasha Wightman. You might recognise her from that horrible adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express from a few years back. The one where Hercule plays with a laptop computer for hours without a battery, without any physical connection to anything, and still basically gets flash-class graphics back that explain the entire story to him. Even Google can't do that. At any rate, Natasha was Mary Debenham, the part played by Vanessa Redgrave in the original (and far better) movie, and she's a lot easier to look at. In fact, Natasha is a 'dish' and the people behind the camera really know how to make her look good - and she really does look good. Of course you'll find her coiffures absolutely impossible given the circumstances she's supposed to be in, but that's the kind of movie you made the mistake of renting. Caveat emptor.

PS. You'll find another reviewer here who says the movie was 'well researched'. Remember: it's a 'litmus test'. And that reviewer's test came out the wrong.

The film started with much promise, but is soon became obvious that either the script writer or the producer or both were out of their depth on the subject. Interesting story lines were made absurd by painfully obvious inconsistent and just plain wrong interpretations of the symbols and imagery. Disappointingly some of the imagery visible in the film at the locations where filming took place, could have been woven into the story to give it more body, but was instead given no more than backdrop status. This film is a lost opportunity; a little more research could have made it more coherent and provided a smooth flow rather than the disjointed feel it seemed to convey.

Director/writer Stuart (PREACHING TO THE PERVERTED) Urban's portentous contemporary religious conspiracy thriller marks a return to feature film production for Britain's Romulus Films (THE AFRICAN QUEEN, OLIVER!, THE DAY OF THE JACKAL) for the first time since 1974's THE ODESSA FILE. The story concerns a young couple (he Jake, the computer hacker ex-con son of an enigmatic billionaire akin to Rupert Murdoch, she Mira, a brainy alchemist) searching for a religious relic ('a loculus') purported to possess mythical powers. This sends them spinning around Europe and Asia following alcehmical, astrological and religious clues, all the while stalked by Udo Kier's supremely villainous 'Grand Master' as Urban stirs all these ingredients into a heady brew, cutting back and forth in time and place with no lack of visual style, finally bringing them to the boil in an apocalyptic climax with implications for the future of mankind. Unfortunately the film, ambitious in scope and breadth, has a reach which exceeds its grasp; especially as it ultimately seems to pay off as a two-hour recruitment film for the Catholic church. Dull leads don't help, although there's sterling support from the enigmatic Terence Stamp as Jake's father, Celia Imrie as Mum, Derek Jacobi as a weaselly University librarian and Ron Moody as Sir Isaac Newton (yes, really). Good to see an independent British film aiming high, but difficult to imagine who'll pay to see this generic mishmash (it lacks sufficient impressive horror or action setpieces for a start). After all, if Demi Moore in THE SEVENTH SIGN and Johnny Depp in THE NINTH GATE couldn't bring in the punters, what hope does this similarly themed and thoughtful, if highly-flawed, fantasy have? File under 'Interesting Failure'.