Medieval

Medieval is helped by a restrained yet captivating performance from Ben Foster. Even better is the production design and costumes; it's a very good-looking, immersive, realistic production.

It's a film that has some impressive moments of intense action and several compelling scenes. But the film can't help but crumble under the weight of its convoluted storytelling.

The plot revolves around a soldier caught in the midst of the political scheming between two brothers who seek to be emperor, and how he and those he leads are forced to suffer the consequences of their scheming.

When I put it that way, it sounds simple; but that's not how it plays out on screen.

The films does a lamentably poor job of establishing its multiple antagonists and their respective loyalties, motivations, and especially how they seek to achieve their goals.

This is largely due in part to an absurd amount of name-dropping that gets difficult to follow. There are certain characters whose names are crucial to the plot but these characters themselves are rarely, and sometimes never, seen.

It's unclear what role everyone is playing in the story because there are so many people to keep track of and the script doesn't properly develop any of them.

Not even the action is particularly exciting. It's mostly clumsily filmed and opaquely edited, leaving the impact of every sword swing and arrow pierce off screen. It's action without weight or a sense of significance.

By the end of the movie, I felt nothing, because the story concludes without anything of note having changed for either the characters or for the political situation we've been following.

It's a largely dull experience without clear stakes and without clear goals and without any meaningful depth of character or theme.

I see why there was virtually no marketing for this whatsoever.

Unlike most of the negative low ratings against this movie that almost made me decide to not viewing it and, even when I finally decided to give it a try, my expectation was still not quite high enough to give it a full shot. But this movie turned out to be pretty good actually. Yes, this movie got a serious audio and soundtrack problems. The dialog between or among the characters sometimes was too low or too vague to be heard clearly, and most of the time was blocked by the annoying loud soundtrack which supposedly should be in the background and subtle enough to support the ongoing of the story, but sadly, the music often played too loud and over-the-top dominant over the scenes, and lot of times too religiously annoying. It also made me wonder if the production team hired a qualified enough audio professional group to handle the recording or microphone. It seems that there were lot of times, the microphone was placed either too far away or too high to record the characters dialog so that always ended up either too vague or too low to be heard clearly. The crew who took care of the audio part of this movie should never be hired by any other movie makers in case to cause the similar problems.

There are so many negative reviews against this movie, but to me, it's a decent and seriously made one, at least worth watching once for your time and money. Ben Foster did a very good job, but the screenplay didn't give him too much to develop and show the character he played. Michael Caine also faithfully did his part, even it's such a weightless role. Sophie Lowe also acted well for her tragic role in this movie, but luckily, her character was much well developed as the storyline went on.

The fighting scenes are well arranged, brutal, bloody and realistic enough to make you cringe sometimes. Again, the faulty audio almost ruined everything!

I didn't have much expectation heading into this, I just generally love watching medieval films and series purely for the gore; I think watching people wage war with spears, battle axes, maces and swords is much more thrilling than gun fights, still love them though.

Straight from the start it reminded me of History's Vikings tv series, if you're a fan of that you might love this as well. I didn't know it's a true story. There wasn't as much character development but I think they didn't have time for that, it focuses more on the story and that was enough to get you invested in the characters by the end. The acting was splendid by the whole cast. A little sad because I have a feeling the movie won't get the recognition it deserves. I think it's better than The Northman in the sense it's paced better and has more story in my opinion, cinematography might not be as great but still pretty good. The fights were amazing and bloody but I thought some gory scenes weren't shown to us, we just get to see the aftermath especially in the first half. There was a lot at stake and I love how you never really know who's gonna make it especially in the third act.

In the end I love it and remembering these are true events really made the emotional end to it even more heartfelt. Fun watch on the big screens if you're a fan of watching medieval knights bang steel slice through skulls like piñatas. Movies based in the dark era aren't always to everyone's taste but I hope this doesn't go under the radar and people get to enjoy it.

There's little effective pretense even though the movie attempts to give some backstory in the first few minutes. This movie will be much more substantial and meaningful to the informed viewers. I initially agreed that the graphic violence was excessive but after researching the man and his exploits on the battlefield, the gore could've gone even farther...

Foster gives a solid performance as Jan Zizka and Sophie Lowe was exceptional as the amiable, loyal and fiercely courageous, Princess Catherine. The Score and Cinematography are both beautifully revealed characters unto themselves.

Medieval isn't 'Gladiator' and doesn't try to be.

It's a stand alone Biographical Account of one of history's greatest military minds. The movie does well with slightly over 2 hours but could easily have been made into a miniseries or multi-part movie(only a small pivotal point of his life is conveyed in the movie). Some may disagree but as a fan of History this is a story that needed to be told, and told in its graphic realism.

There's a couple early hiccups in the dialogue but otherwise it's fairly well written and flows evenly after a lagging beginning. Medieval is a solid 70/100.

I love Ben Foster. I think he chooses excellent movies.

I could maybe make out 30% of the dialogue in this movie. The audio is absolutely atrocious. The acting is good, the cinematography is great... So the fact that you simply cannot understand any dialogue is beyond glaring. It's not even the accents. If the dialogue isn't being drowned out by the unnecessary loud and booming bass, the spoken words are just unintelligible. I cannot believe a movie with this kind of cast would have these kind of issues.

There were also several spots with obvious editing issues. Where the characters mouth did not match up with the words the audience was hearing. Which just goes to show that no one who produced this movie bothered to actually watch it. Amateur stuff.

With a plot that is already hard to follow as others have mentioned, these issues made the movie nearly unwatchable. Super disappointed.