Barbarossa

This is about the campaigns to conquer Italy of German Emperor Frederick ,whom the Italians called Barbarossa because he had a red beard.Its obvious that a movie of this scope would need a Hollywood grade-A budget and basically everything grade-A.They didn't have it in this movie,they tried with second-grade actors like Rutger Hauer and a mediocre budget.Which means its not exactly cheap,some battle scenes are pretty decent but its also not exactly satisfying in size and scope of such events.If they had managed to bring to life such historical events,they would be worthy of academy awards.That said,its not bad as a mediocre medieval movie,but its just too small for the story it is undertaking.They could have limited themselves to a smaller part of the Barbarossa campaigns.Yet,for people who like medieval historical movies with battle scenes,its an OK effort.

The only reason I didn't give this a "1" was because some of the cinematography was decent. However, even the best cinematography can't save a film from truly bad acting, a horrible script, poor directing and sloppy editing.

The only good acting I saw in this movie came from F. Murray Abraham. All the rest were... well, not even good amateurs. They seemed to have no training or experience in acting at all. Their characters were entirely unbelievable.

I'm not the least bit surprised to see that this flick lost money. Someone should do us all a favor and lose all the prints, copies, DVDs, etc. Don't waste any portion of your life on this movie -- find something, anything else to watch.

I have only one word for this movie. RIDICULOUS. Ok maybe two. STUPID. Every aspiring filmmaker out there needs to watch this movie bcos it's a lesson on 'HOW NOT TO MAKE AN EPIC MOVIE'.

It's a shame. The story has potential. Good ol' fashioned right vs wrong. The film looks pretty good: rousing battle scenes, nice costumes, and good looking actors (Rutger Hauer actually makes a striking Emperor Federick I Barbarossa), but the story meanders. I suspect a bit tighter direction could have saved this film. As is, I never developed any strong sympathies for any of the protagonists. In fact, one's sympathies run as much for Frederick as they do the Milanese supposedly fighting for freedom from the empire (repleat with a recurring Braveheart-esquire cry of 'freedom'). I didn't give it a lower rating because at least the film left me thinking about it enough to want to look it up and write a review (and that is significant). Seeing a film like this always makes one wish to see the results from a more seasoned director.

There was a lot of the same horse sound effects being used for every single horse scene (of which there are many).

The end battle scene was OK. It just took 120 minutes to get there. So whilst waiting for the big money scene, you are forced to sit through a boring, impossible romance, some boring politics, some peasants trying to take on the bad guys, and one peasant fellow who was probably the most useless character in the entire movie.

Not one of the characters was engaging. The movie spends a lot of time with a feral witch female character who looks like she was born in the jungle. She spends a lot of time crawling around on all fours like a rabid mutt, sniffing the ground and her boyfriend, and peering at the camera through dirty oily curtains of hair. She also spends the majority of time wearing a potato sack for clothes. What exactly did the BF see in this dirty little rat creature again? Oh, and she had magical powers.

After the prerequisite love scene (interspersed with the death of her sister, how utterly original) you'd think things would start moving. Nope, it takes another hour. The end is an impossible-to-read narration of events that happens, but at least our hero lives happily ever after with his feral wife and they have lots of children together.

This looked like it was made for TV. The production values were strangely cheap looking and the same locations were used to portray totally different places. How utterly boring.

1/10