package for a precise message, portrait of a hero, not real interested by historical accuracy, it is one of films who impress for its details. first, it is the film of Alec Guinness who gives a splendid Charles I Stuart, fascinating lawyer of his convinces and position, one with his noble condition and giving special light to each scene. than, Timoty Dalton does a good job as prince Rupert. the tensions in Parlament and the battle scenes are useful sketches of real events. the basic problem - the impossible mission of Richard Harris. the script imposes to him a too ambiguous character, hero, off course, but unrealistic and without a precise purpose. and that does the message of film to be a text with too many paragraphs.and many paragraphs are contradictory. like the the reactions of Cromwell. his position at the start of Civil War - far by historical reality.he must be the Hero but the manner to do him a hero is almost bizarre. and the absence of the measures under the reign of Lord Protector are the great sin. but, for its good points, it remains an interesting film.

First of all Cromwell is a decent enough film to make it worthy of the 2 hours 10 mins approx that you will spend watching it, there certainly are worse things you could be doing with your time and much worse films you could be watching, take Bram Stoker's Legend of the Mummy 2, a film very few people will have heard of but count yourselves lucky you have not had to suffer it.Now the film is not that historically accurate at times but if you wanted to be bombarded with information about the time then you would probably be watching a BBC programme with Simon Schama presenting it and lets be honest how many films are truly accurate to history? Braveheart and Titanic aren't but they have a lot in the realm of entertainment and what makes a good film. Cromwell has some but not to the extent of those just mentioned. There are more interesting moments and there are moments where some of you will likely want to just turn it off and possibly put something else on which has a lot more action. There is a lot of talking in this film but a decent couple of battles in the middle of it to break it up.The performances of the film are both good and bad. Alec Guinness gives an excellent portrayal of King Charles I and I truly thought he was the King but lets be honest did we expect anything less from one of the all time greats? Richard Harris (everyones favourite Dumbledore) is a mixed bag in this film. He has moments where he is okay but I found him quite wooden overall and certainly not his best performance. He also seems to shout in most the scenes he is in and apparently he did damage to his voice because of it - Yeah not really surprised if I'm honest.The score of the film was quite good but there were parts where I found some of the music to be a bit out of place with what was happening on screen. The Direction and Cinematography were okay but nothing special.Overall this was quite an enjoyable film at times and gives you a good outline of the events that happened at the time despite its historical inaccuracies.If you enjoyed this review I suggest you read Empire Magazines review of it which I found quite amusing if a little harsh - http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/review.asp?FID=132226

Why is it that to many people even in the UK the American Civil War is so much more interesting than the English one?Surely there could be no grander cause than defending the right of the people to rule the people and ending the Divine Right of Kings?I approached "Cromwell" in the hope that it would do something to redress the balance,but,sadly it failed to do so. Some of the blame could be rested on Cromwell himself,played by Mr R.Harris as a Puritan,both literally and figuratively.A man with the charisma of a breeze block and the temper of a starving hyena,he glowers and rants and raves at regular intervals when he isn't saying "Aaaah!" to denote irony with just the faintest Irish accent which in itself is the ultimate irony considering the real life Cromwell's proclivities. On occasions of particularly high emotions,Mr Harris's voice takes on the timbre of a peevish Dalek though fortunately by the end of the picture he is rapidly overtaken by what appears to be a rather bad case of laryngitis. Sir Alec Guinness gives us a rather camp and waspish King Charles who releases Bon Mots with the regularity of Oscar Wilde on a deadline. "Do you want it good or do you want it Wednesday?" as they say in the scriptwriting business...well,we got it Wednesday. Many reliable second - string British actors turn out and speak their lines as if on the boards with the R.S.C. where no doubt most of them would have been much happier. The lovely Miss D.Tutin has little to say despite her billing;but she does manage to look quite fierce in all the right places.No wonder Sir Alec looked terrified of her. Where is our Sherman,or Lee or Jackson? Can you imagine John Wayne as Cromwell and Ward Bond as his best friend? Where was our Appomatox,our Bull Run? Perhaps the Americans are simply better at building myths than we are. Certainly I can't see the Americans letting anything as dour,colourless and downright dull about their Civil War loose on the public.

This film is well-done and the battles, military or political, are clear enough in spite of the numerous ellipses due to the extremely dense and long period covered by the film from 1640 to 1650 or so. Yet it does not really explain who Cromwell was and if he had real objectives of his own beyond his religious rhetoric. It also clearly explains why this period could not go beyond that transitory and imperfect compromise of the least bad in a difficult period leaving the better and the best for later.The film depicts a king who was absolutely tied up in his feudal belief that he had been appointed by God and had no accounts to give to any one. This dominant feudal position was also the dominant legal position: there was no law and no jurisprudence that enabled a king to be dismissed by any authority other than death and God. On that question Cromwell represented a new point of view that had never existed anywhere else in the Christian world at the time. What does human society have to do in such a situation? Move on and let history do what it wants. So they moved on and had the king beheaded after a three days' hearing that could hardly qualify as a trial.Could there have been a compromise moving towards any parliamentary democracy? No, for three main reasons. First the king was stubborn and probably not very swift, at least not able to understand that God is a very good fellow but that on earth we work with compromises and not absolute authority. Second parliament, or what was left of this long parliament, was not elected by the people as is repeated galore of times in the film, but only by a few tens of thousands of people: the propertied and business owning tax paying people and these people, landowners first, could have in their chattel some human serfs or indentured servants who were nothing but a property of some type. These of course, the vast majority of the people had no right to vote. Third Cromwell never accepted to move towards a wider and more open definition of democracy like the Levelers were asking and he even had one of their leaders hanged. In other words the two civil wars led to a draw and nothing else and the only way out was to disband parliament and to rule alone.But the film – that is maybe too old for that – could have questioned history a little bit more and insisted on the essential and contradictory elements of the period. First it is Parliament that introduced for the first and only time in England a body of state censors to implement official censorship of anything published before publication. The discourse about religious freedom was in fact a very one-sided approach of that freedom: freedom provided the Catholics be chased and hunted, the Anglican church and all chapels have no bishops and archbishops, (which was nearly impossible to implement with the Anglican church, and yet they tried). It would have been interesting to show that tremendously sectarianism if not fundamentalism on the side of the moderate puritans like Cromwell as well as on the side of the most committed people beyond this revolution.But the film is absolutely silent on the main subject: the economy. The great expansion to the Americas (northern essentially) but also to the Indian Ocean and to Africa, started under Elizabeth, went on under James I and Charles I, but also went on and even accelerated under Cromwell. But this great expansion was not paid by the Crown for the simple reason the Crown had no fleet whatsoever. The fleet was a merchant fleet in the hands of the mercantile societies and companies that started being set up, and the sailors were those of these companies ,including the militarized ones necessary for the security of that commerce. The Royal fleet was still to come and will be for some time still. If they had thought of that they would have understood the importance of this period in England: it liberated the energy of these merchants because many controls and obligations set under the kings were dropped or eased out.That would also explain why Cromwell had to summon Parliament when he wanted to fight his naval war against Spain (essential for the development of maritime commerce), he had to go to Parliament to ask the Members of Parliament who directly represented or were the merchants in question to accept to lend their ships and their sailors to organize some fleet. That's what happened under Cromwell again.That would also explain what we can think of the readiness of history to accept change. England was not ready for a true parliamentary system of the people for the people by the people. Free and general elections were not even thought of possible. The Industrial Revolution was not even in the making yet. And habeas corpus and other fundamental human rights were not yet even imagined. That will need the Restoration which will be a failure with the second king, James II, and the Glorious Revolution that will oust him. Cromwell at least had the great merit of not trying to force history, or at least not too much, and what he did more or less survived his time after the restoration. The beheading of the king was useless, probably a mistake as Tony Benn thought, but he refused to become a King in his place. He stopped short of the irreversible mistake that would have brought him down in less than a year probably. In other words he was on that point as prudent as Napoleon who did not take the title of King after the French Revolution.So I am slightly disappointed by this film because it is at best a prudent presentation.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU