Warlord

A mini fantasy drama like a draft and sketch of 'Lord of the Moose'. It is entertaining and enthralling if you have nothing else to watch. The set design, costumes and visual effects were good to decent, while the storyline, script and flow were subpar.

If you would like to watch fantasy revolt movie, LOTR and The Hobbit are much better choices.

• Screenplay/storyline/plots: 4
• Production value/impact: 5
• Development: 6
• Realism: 3.5
• Entertainment: 4
• Acting: 5
• Filming/photography/cinematography: 6.5
• VFX: 6.5
• Music/score/sound: 6.5
• Depth: 4.5
• Logic: 3.5
• Flow: 4
• Psychological/fantasy/action/drama: 4
• Ending: 2.

Who is this made for? I watched the entire first 30 minutes and still have no clue what this is about. Fantasy movie only in name and costumes. All they do is talk. Boring as boring can be. If you have children be careful, there is a scene where a guy is running in the woods naked and his privates are clearly outlined as he prances around. Bizarre. He gets caqptured, castrated and tar and feathered by the elves. Adds nothing to the movie except more disgust and makes no sense. This is not a spoiler, there is nothing here to spoil. I think that is the main action scene in this bore fest.

Listen, I adore Lord of Rings, most fantasy tv shows, and cut them a lot of slack. I forgive much. I am a fantasy geek hardcore. But this thing is not a proper movie. Not even a proper play. Every high school play is better than this. Maybe it was crowd funded? I want my half hour back.

I did fast forward to make sure there were no later scenes to redeem it. But no, zero.

Did they really think this was good enough to make more than one of? The ending of this movie is setting it up for a second, but who will green light that? The big twist was kind of assanign. For the budget this thing probably had I will say they did a decent job with the set. But the acting and the pacing where slow and tedious. I can't believe I made it through the whole thing. I guess I was thinking it would get better, or I liked some of the class war messaging, but then it spits on all that. Anything that was good abot it was lost by the end of this low budget robinhood with elves movie./

The Good News: The cinematography and acting are decent. Too bad you don't see a fantasy movie for the acting.

The plot is boringly xenophobic and the usual anti-authority: The elves and humans don't get along, with the humans holding all of the cards and the elves being exiled to the woods. The sheriff is right from the Stock Evil collection: He's running roughshod over the local population while forcefully taking control of the bakeries and forcing others into the mines.

In other words, nothing you really haven't seen before. Adding to the fun is the usual over-the-top violence.

Then there's the ending, which isn't exactly your feel-good ending, which comes from nowhere. It's nice that the bad guys get punished, but only by making the chasm between elves and humans even deeper. It's the sole surprise in the movie.

All told, there is a surprise ending to the movie, but it's unlikely most people would last past the first twenty minutes. There's a lot of scenery chewing, but it doesn't really add to the movie and most of it has no payoff. You can miss this movie with little worry of missing anything important.

Warlord is one of those movies that really pulls you in and doesn't let go. The story feels fresh but familiar in the best way, and the world-building is seriously impressive. I especially liked the use of magic, not too much, but just enough.

The performances are strong across the board, and the visuals have this gritty, lived-in feel that makes everything more real.

The pacing is tight too - it always feels like something important is about to happen, and you're just glued to it. You can tell a lot of care went into every part of it, from the costumes to the music. Definitely worth checking out if you like smart, grounded fantasy.

If you're expecting some Spiderman action, this is obviously an indie and you can see they worked with what they had. Which they did really well.