Pendragon: Sword of His Father

I gave this movie a 2 just because I'm a generous guy. This movie is definitely not worth watching. Why? Where do I begin: The actors were terrible, the effects were horrible, and the costumes weren't good either. The Saxon soldiers looked like clowns gone mad. Seriously. Me and my amigo tried to watch the entire movie but we just couldn't. It's unbearable. I'm gonna give a piece of advice to the makers of the movie - Next time you guys decide to make a quality film, make sure your budged is higher than $215. - Anyway, people, I would strongly advice against watching this movie. I mean, the idea of the movie is good. In theory, looking at the plot, it's a good movie, but in reality it's a disaster.

Fantasy/adventure is not my favorite type of film, but my children love it and so I watch it quite a bit. This being said, Pendragon does not deserve the reviews it has received on this site. This is a shame because I use IMDb as a guide to weed out poor-quality movies. After reading the reviews stating that the acting was inferior, the effects lame and the whole thing mismanaged, we almost did not watch the movie. Pendragon was great for its genre. The acting well-played, the scenes convincing, the effects stunning (sword fights well-done). The only reasons why someone might give this film a poor review are: religious objections to a movie that shows a society of faith, not atheism; artistic objections because the movie had no CGI- that is, the actors had to "act", do their own stunts, etc,... Or perhaps the poor reviewers simply prefer to be fed the drivel seeping out of Hollywood, instead of watching a real movie, with actors acting realistically to circumstances, and a real family making it happen. Excellent film. Please make more!

I was looking for a film about King Arthur and/or Merlin and instead I got a Christian family made film about God and faith. There's little to no dialogue and when people do speak it's delivered terribly. This film has an agenda to tell history through the eyes of contemporary Pious people. It's almost comical when a completely inept (non) actor says "this is the gateway to Britain" with a Midwestern accent. For the first 15 minutes it was not clear who is who and what is what and why anything was happening. It was funny when the German Saxon had a Scottish accent though. It took 23 minutes to hear the father call-out the main character's name, "Arthur". The lack of dialogue other than when they speak about God's grace, is actually astounding. What a great disappointment to the story of King Arthur, who, it seems traveled with "knights" that likely were not religious at all. It was hard to watch the people pretending to act. I can not help wondering why they would have these people pretend to act, they're worse than amateur actors, they're worse than any High School musical I've seen. I've seen better acting on the stage of a Middle School. it was painful, I had to turn it off.

This film is the work of one family and is their first effort to make a complete film yet it is a very good piece of work. The story is interesting, the battle scenes are well done, the villain is absolutely hateful, and the hero is admirable! The two men who portrayed hero and villain were very good though several of the other actors were obviously not professionals and is the picture's main weakness. And it has a Christian message not only about strong faith but also about faithful living as a Christian. What more could you ask?

Amazing special effects/explosions looked around at least 8 Million in my opinion, but they did it for 80K, so kudos. Furthermore, 2 families dreamed this up in their basement and got volunteers to build a village (and then burn it down)--amazing vision, organization, and talent. (The final sword fight was one of the longest and best choreographed I have ever seen.) As for the plot, not bad--it felt like they were headed towards political intrigue and got side-winded towards more action instead--but still, very classic though a little hard to understand all the subtleties at times.

Main actors were good, but acting suffered most because 1. script doctor needed to tailor script to actors' personalities--not actors towards script 2. people acting because they had to 3. Acting with family members is difficult, especially when you're pretending to be in love with someone you're related to, which is a little awkward. 4. confusing storyline changes midway so the complex bad guy becomes simple near the end and some of the storyline nuances were lost.

But as for the historical inaccuracies, this film was remarkably accurate on several points: Firstly the realism (not hyper-realism with gritty and dirty people in undershirts) , Secondly the religious idealism of the Dark Ages (that many modern people do not understand), Thirdly the Roman-Briton civilization confronting the Saxon barbarians, (and putting the Saxon in their native tongue).

As for the religious element, it may make movie-junkies squirm--but the religious sentiment was quite different in the Dark Ages than it is in Hollywood now, and certainly shows a healthy form of idealism rather than the typical elitism found in critics' circles. My only complaint is that there could have been more Liturgical focus as is found in Catholic/Anglican churches, but still the historical effort was appreciated.

Overall, good film for the family but slightly violent for the sensitive at heart.