I had somewhat planned to see the new horror movie Barbarian. I’d heard nothing but good things about it from online critics I generally trust and often agree with, but the general consensus was the plot behind it was very much not what it appeared to be from the trailers. Curious, I looked a little deeper because spoilers don’t always bother me as I care most about execution in the end, and what I learned about Barbarian basically suggested it was not the movie for me. Maybe when I can watch it at home.
However, there was another big release in the form of Medieval about a historic Czech hero from the 14th century. Maybe it would be another The Last Duel.
This is no Last Duel.
The movie opens with Michael Caine, here in a supporting role as one Lord Boreš, essentially explaining that Europe is a chaotic mess because there’s no Holy Roman Emperor and the Catholic Church has two rival popes. There’s hope to bring some measure of peace and stability if someone can get the Bohemian king Wenceslaus IV (Karel Roden) to Rome for the coronation. However, Wenceslaus is deep in debt, and he’ll need some measure of safe passage to get to Rome before the winter arrives and makes it all impossible. If that sounds like a lot, keep in mind that for some reason, about a third of Caine’s voiceover narration also appears on screen as text. Why? I have no idea, and that could describe so much about this movie.
As it is, there is some hope in the form of mercenary warrior Jan Žižka (Ben Foster). Jan and his band of mercenaries are all top notch fighters with a tendency to recruit new members from the last survivor of any opposing force they face. Boreš has a plan for Žižka: kidnap Catherine (Sophie Lowe), the goodhearted fiancee of Lord Henry of Rosenberg (TIl Schweiger), someone with some leverage over Wenceslaus as one of the king’s creditors. That would give Wenceslaus some leverage over Rosenberg to grant him the necessary passage. However, Wenceslaus’s own half-brother Sigismund (Matthew Goode) has his own designs on various thrones, and he’s more than willing to make some moves, even if Catherine is the niece of the King of France.
If that sounds like a lot, that’s just the basic set-up since a lot happens in the movie. That’s not a compliment. This movie is the sort of movie where things suddenly happen rather frequently. There is usually a line to set something up, but then it comes out as this big, over-the-top thing that seems to come out of nowhere because the movie did so little to set-up for these moments. Fight scenes often make no sense. Large scale battles make it impossible to tell who is on what side, and the camera or music will linger when characters die as if those characters somehow meant something to the audience. But I honestly didn’t know who most of these people even were as I only knew a handful of character names. At one point, one character says “Conrad is gone!” and I had no idea who Conrad was.
Factor in as well the cornucopia of accents as every actor used their own natural one–not good for my tinnitus–and the aforementioned complaint that I had no idea what most of those characters’ names were, and I was often left wondering what was going on. There were far too many moments where someone or something would just literally pop up and do something, and it might have meant something if I knew more about these characters, but people just appeared and disappeared as needed by the plot. About the only thing I can say worked were some rather gorgeous shots here and there, but the plot made no sense, the characters were paper thin, and there were too many times when I was wondering who was even winning in the various fight scenes. Just don’t bother with this one.
Grade: F
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