Bit shit, good to take the piss out of........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

There is nothing special about this movie at all. Zip. Average everything.. acting, direction, sets, cinematography, dialog… plot too. Its just a too-long story. I can't even call it confused as there isn't that much to it. Long, really long scenes of guys running through the mountains. Up the mountains. Down the mountains. Across the streams, around the trees. Some very bloody fighting filmed in such a way as to make it impossible to tell who was killing and who wasn't. Witches, mutes, little princes, Roman governors, bar fights… where is Kirk Douglas when he's really needed to give a movie some pizazz.

Obviously, movie reviews are subjective and not everyone will agree. The genre of so-called historical fiction is quite popular and one of the staples of Hollywood's bread and butter recipes. This review is not to debate the accuracy of the history depicted in this movie. It is only to critique the movie as a movie. Unfortunately, this movie fails on several levels.The story simply boils down to survival in a brutal world, where humanity is reduced to animal instincts, only wishing or praying for salvation. There are seemingly no good guys or bad guys. They are all amoral simpletons bent on revenge, torture, punishment and the like. Their goal only victories over their enemy and then "going home." The acting is without nuance. All the characters are 2 dimensional with minimal character development. It was hard to like any character in the movie. On the other hand, the editing maintains great pace and rhythm during battle scenes. This was one of the few positives I found while watching battle after battle. At times, in non-battle scenes, however, transitions seemed abrupt and uneven. The cinematography remained atmospheric and crisp throughout, although primarily to enhance gory details or spectacular vistas, the harshness of this world, rather than to create depth and subtext. Indeed, the overall direction seemed overly focused on brutal killing using, featuring a wide variety of cinematic tricks to show all manner of death and killing (to the point of pornography in my opinion). Depictions of battle, facial expressions of hatred, anger, or desperation and fear predominate the multiple close-up shots. The violence was over-emphasized to the detriment of the plot and characters. The fight-flight response was demonstrated on the screen very well but ended up dehumanizing and flattening the story considerably. All in all, there was no depth to this movie and, consequently, it was very difficult to suspend disbelief. Similarly, no sub textual meaning was evident, no clear thematic arc. I would not recommend this movie to anyone other than those interested only in action scenes and on screen brutality and violence. There is a place for action and brutality on the screen unless it is simply done for its own sake.

It's silly. What did you expect? 10 lines of text on this would probably contain more substance than the movie. It's a low-budget chop-em-up sword and sandal effort. About as plausible as a Popeye cartoon with a load of portentous waffling about "honour" (as opposed to "honor") etc. That said it's more entertaining than watching emulsion paint dry and less painful than root canal treatment. It amazes me that people review this sort of meaningless light entertainment as if it bore the slightest relationship to the historical events or period which it's supposed to depict. That's "de-Pict" in this case. You've seen worse - whether you were aware of the fact I can't possibly know.