Stultifyingly long 2 hour epic abut the formation of the Lombard League stuffed full of fascist symbolism and Rutger Hauer. Actually it was really stuffed full of horses.The script was a real clunker full of people telling each other historically important things the audience need to know but which they would have been fully aware - "Yes, these new taxes that the newly installed Pope Bendict the whateverth are really hurting the people..." Blah blah blah. Real local radio advertising dialogue. "Yes, June with the Lombardy League you get not one but two chances of fighting for...." Blah blah blah.Mixed in with this guff there was a subplot about a woman who had visions, was due to be burned as a witch - but wasn't by order of the Empress (who burned someone else instead) and ended up, for some totally unexplained reason, in armour on the battlefield (though whose side she was on is anyone's guess).The only thing that kept me watching, apart from the insane hotness of the witchy woman (Kasia Smutniak), was giggling with glee at every new interior. For some reason (maybe he had shares in a candle company) every interior was full of candles. Inside a peasant's hut late at night as the occupants try to go to sleep there were at least a dozen candles alight in the room. A dungeon cell had another dozen, and when the hero and heroine fall into bed at last, in a ramshackle hut - in daylight! - with sunlight streaming in through every crack and crevice - candles.It rained on the funeral too. But only only round the grave itself. The people standing in the back were in brilliant sunshine and dry as bones. Between the candle scenes we had the horse scenes. Horses filled up a lot of screen time in this movie. Sometimes they went this way, sometimes they went that way, sometimes they were in slow motion. I would guess a quarter of this film's running time was spent on shots of people riding across the screen. Gallumph gallumph gallumph. People appeared and disappeared from the narrative - and then reappeared when you'd forgotten who they were. (not that you could tell because everyone wore generic medieval brown and had generic medieval dirty hair and beards).The whole thing looks like it was shot as a miniseries and they cut it down to a movie. Only they cut out the wrong bits.Another quid wasted in Poundland and another one off my 'Watch Rutger Hauer's Entire Career' list.

Italian movies about Italian history are the best! The cast of this movie was chosen from throughout Europe, from France to Russia, many of them actors and directors in their own name. Viewers who adore films where soldiers are drugged and immune to their actions, those are the viewers who will be shocked by how war was conducted only a few hundred years ago. No doubt they will interpret passionate emotions as over- acting. Killing another man requires a powerful will in men who wish for peace. Desiring freedom is a part of human nature in most cultures and gives meaning to life for men, women and children. This is a movie for rebels, who value life and liberty. The horrors of war on those who are on the receiving end of preemptive attacks are eloquently shown. Iraqi, Arabian, Greek, Turk, Spanish, Afghani, or in the Americas -change the nationality of the Milanese to any nationality and the pathos (suffering) of human beings is the same. The best version is in Italian, so for those who cannot understand Italian or find a version with English subtitles - the English dubbed version is the presentation of less quality; but well worth a watch.

This movie is a very elaborate joke, with a incredible punchline, but it take 2 hours to get there...2 hours you will never get back.So yes there will be spoiler...Two hours where nothing really happen except a siege, a siege where Rutger Hauer, as the main villain of the movie, explain to us what a siege is (What? We are going to wait for them to get tired and starved? How brilliant!)...well thanks for all the info O mighty King Obvious the first.After some treason, some tribulations of a guy who like to say to everyone that he as founded the COMPANY OF DEATH and that he is ready to die for FREEDOM. There is also two sisters (I think) one of them as been strike by lightning, witch make her ''special'', and for god know what reason she is the love interest of the movie.Then after many boring speech where they remind all who can hear that they are the COMPANY OF DEATH they go fight the army of the cruel king...for FREEDOM. Then the joke is on you, after an hilariously bad battle scene, it is revealed that the king got beaten...OFF SCREEN! Yes the main antagonist of the movie die, disappear, got defeated, you really stop to care once you get there, off screen! And then they found the love interest in an Armour... in the middle of the battlefield...for no good reason. Why his she there? how she got there?...we will never know. Then the movie remind us how accurate historically he is. And then the credits. And then you realizing that that movie was just one weird joke.I don't recommend it, unless you have a very weird sense of humour....

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.