It's good to see that Di Laurentis films are carrying on in the same style as always: crap.
True, it's the kind of crap I like, so it's not necessarily a bad description in relation to their films.
Usually.
In this case, thought I really can't make up my mind about it. It has a good, one might even say great, cast. They mostly do a pretty good job. The fights are excellent and it looks pretty good. Yet I just couldn't settle into it.
There is one big issue I have with this film that I must get out of the way from the beginning. Racism.
It is set during the fall of the Roman Empire to the Goths and supposedly explains the origin of Excalibur (and it sort of does, but I rather preferred the idea of it being a magical weapon bestowed upon the Pendragon line by the sithe, not a really good sword made from bits of an asteroid. That's just personal preference, though). Apparently it all happened rather quickly and around a few short battles. Many of the characters are said to be either Roman or Celtic and these good and noble races are depicted with cast members of all representatives of the latter playing Celts. Apart from Scots because they play the Goths and are played as uncouth, psychopathic, barbarians. For some reason, despite actually being Scottish, many of their accents sound fake. Go figure. Kevin McKidd has perpetrated this oddity in the past. When I first heard him in Grand Theft Auto I was shocked to discover that it actually was him it sounded so fake.
Yet, I'm ambivalent about the use of Scots as the bad guys. Hey, at least it made the villains a discrete racial unit and it meant that many Scots (the usual suspects, mind you) got work out of it.
Ashiwarya Rai is good in it, but - as with almost all women playing warriors - she's just not physically believable. As always her gender is disguised, but you can tell a mile off it's a woman. Frankly, she's just too elegant, beautiful and well-groomed to be believable as a warrior. She still has a really good manicure! And where did they get than standard roman leather breastplate with mouldings in it for her breasts? For that matter, where did the boots with rubber soles come from?
Much of the digital work, again, looks shoddy. I'm beginning to think that this is an artifact of HiDef as it surely can't be every effects house making the same look intentionally. In this case there are shots so badly out of focus they made my eyes cross!
Oh, and Hadrian's wall faces the wrong way. The side with the Roman defenders on it is the Pictish side.
True, it's the kind of crap I like, so it's not necessarily a bad description in relation to their films.
Usually.
In this case, thought I really can't make up my mind about it. It has a good, one might even say great, cast. They mostly do a pretty good job. The fights are excellent and it looks pretty good. Yet I just couldn't settle into it.
There is one big issue I have with this film that I must get out of the way from the beginning. Racism.
It is set during the fall of the Roman Empire to the Goths and supposedly explains the origin of Excalibur (and it sort of does, but I rather preferred the idea of it being a magical weapon bestowed upon the Pendragon line by the sithe, not a really good sword made from bits of an asteroid. That's just personal preference, though). Apparently it all happened rather quickly and around a few short battles. Many of the characters are said to be either Roman or Celtic and these good and noble races are depicted with cast members of all representatives of the latter playing Celts. Apart from Scots because they play the Goths and are played as uncouth, psychopathic, barbarians. For some reason, despite actually being Scottish, many of their accents sound fake. Go figure. Kevin McKidd has perpetrated this oddity in the past. When I first heard him in Grand Theft Auto I was shocked to discover that it actually was him it sounded so fake.
Yet, I'm ambivalent about the use of Scots as the bad guys. Hey, at least it made the villains a discrete racial unit and it meant that many Scots (the usual suspects, mind you) got work out of it.
Ashiwarya Rai is good in it, but - as with almost all women playing warriors - she's just not physically believable. As always her gender is disguised, but you can tell a mile off it's a woman. Frankly, she's just too elegant, beautiful and well-groomed to be believable as a warrior. She still has a really good manicure! And where did they get than standard roman leather breastplate with mouldings in it for her breasts? For that matter, where did the boots with rubber soles come from?
Much of the digital work, again, looks shoddy. I'm beginning to think that this is an artifact of HiDef as it surely can't be every effects house making the same look intentionally. In this case there are shots so badly out of focus they made my eyes cross!
Oh, and Hadrian's wall faces the wrong way. The side with the Roman defenders on it is the Pictish side.
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