Lenya - Die größte Kriegerin aller Zeiten

A lot of darkness and fire in the titles, the village burnt down by the evil invaders to provide a good reason for revenge later on - yes, the beginning is quite reminiscent of "Conan the Barbarian", but since this is a TV production, it develops into a direction of less blood spilling (our heroine many times rather knocks an enemy unconscious than killing him) and more political correctness, putting the heathen believers in Odin and Christian monks on the same side (!) against a follower of black magic who listens to a shape-shifting evil witch.

Shot in nice locations, the good technical work makes it look fine for the budget. Occasionally, a sudden zoom or surprise cut shows the school of the 1970s here instead of the dull epic style of nowadays. Talking of school, that's where you want to send Anja Knauer (as Lenya) back to - for her sloppy dialog performance. Pronouncing every "ist" like "is'" befits street talk, not historical drama. She must have been cast for the athletic bit rather than anything else. I liked Hendrik Duryn as Gero, though. Sympathetic character with a very fitting dark edge. Sonja Kirchberger as the witch is so creepy, that's a performance any cinema production would be proud of. The ending suggests a sequel was planned - or maybe this was intended to be the pilot of a series, but that never happened. I could imagine a few reasons why, such as the quest for the magical sword which is not exactly a brand-new story idea...

'Lenya' is a film about a young peasant girl who is chosen by the gods for a special task. She has to find a special sword and deal with an evil witch. So much for the story which could be lifted from a Xena episode. But I think it is better because it is not as goofy as Xena, the actors are better and the look of the film is more convincing. The performances of the actors were good, especially Sonja Kirchberger was fun to watch as the evil witch. Anja Kramers performance was good too, but her voice sometimes was so flat I thought she was reading a book.

The fight scenes were a mixed bag, some scenes looked obviously staged. The visual effects were a little bit too much in my opinion but of acceptable quality for a TV film. I really liked the locations of this film because they looked simply magnificent with all the old castles and wide landscapes (unlike Xena where every village looks the same). As far as I can tell the interior scenes were shot in the real castles or buildings and not on a soundstage which adds to the atmosphere. The camera work, however, was a mess. Whenever people were talking or fighting the camera moved around which was pretty annoying. Another overused technique was to show the same scene four times in a row from different angles. If used one or two times for an important scene it looks cool and emphasizes the tension, but used every five minutes (as in this film) it got pesky very fast. One further issue was the sound mixing because music was at some points too loud and the lip synchronisation was now and then (especially in the camp scene at the beginning) very poor. Also some scenes included more hissing and breathing than any other sound which was probably supposed to rise the suspense but made it sound awkwardly. The editor cut the film very fast but, again, at some points it just didn't fit and disturbed the pacing of the film. Given more attention in post production this should have been avoided.

For a TV movie produced by RTL (for people outside Germany: RTL equals crap) I was pretty surprised to have seen a film where I didn't had the feeling to have wasted two hours. The story isn't original in any way, but the actors perform very well and the look convinces so if you like Xena or Hercules you will probably like this too. I voted 7/10.