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Philip French 18 May 2012

A topical history lesson in the form of a horror comic.

Richard Smith 17 May 2012

Neither fish nor fowl, just foul

I find it very strange these days the most ardent goal of those workingin the visual arts is to obscure from their audience the events theyare attempting to portray. Yet again we have here an example of motionsickness-inducing camera work worthy of an inexpert 1970's home movie.Why do they do this? Is it to unsuccessfully try to make us feel likewe're actually there? I don't want to feel like I am in the fight, carcrash, whatever - I want to watch the film! This self-indulgent "jerky"camera work probably allows cinematographers to have lots ofpretentious conversations about realism, but find me one movie-goer wholikes this trend and I will eat my camcorder.As for the movie itself? It's all been done before so anyone treadingthis path has to either add something spectacular or be historicallycorrect. "Ironclad" fails in both respects. All wars are about moneyand here we have one foreign interloper (the king) fighting anotherload of interlopers (the barons) in order to have the right to tax andoppress the indigenous Anglo-Saxon population. Plus ca change. Thereare no good guys, only events, and the historical inaccuracies(including the ridiculously cartoonish Danish mercenaries) make whatcould have been a good historical yarn at best disappointing and atworst comical.One thing I will say though: Rochester hasn't changed much.

Trevor Johnston 17 May 2012

Slipshod storytelling allows the excitement to peak too early, leaving us considerably less engaged by the time the underwhelming and predictable final stand-off is upon us.

Jason Best 16 May 2012

James Purefoy's Marshal is still bound by his Templar oaths, but will he be able to preserve his vow of chastity when Kate Mara's lady of the castle starts fondling his great big Templar sword?

yeodawg 09 May 2012

Paul GIAMITTI pays King JOHN by reprising his BIG FAT LOSER ROLL, oh and wench-sex

Oh!...so now king ARTHUR was a renegade TEMPLAR Now lets go back intime the last time we checked in King ARTHUR was a Roman Calvary manwho fought the blonde horde of SAXONS, now he's a templar fighting theun-washed blonde horde of DANES hired by the Church to back King JOHNin his reclamation. Like CENTURION, an the King Arthur TV series thisshow is filmed in dark damp realistic England castles, WHICH IS BORINGAND SLOW…..the pace was slower than a history channel documentary. Butit makes up for it with plenty-o-WENCH-SEX. Now me being an American Iknow of VORTIGAN, who wanted to kill Merlin as a boy to stabilize hiscastle. I know of King Arthur, of course, King RICHARD, King GEORGE forthe revolution and the queen of England. So all these films handingKing John a beating over the Magna Cart is awesome interesting andeducational. There's a lot of gory sword of course, a lot usualsuspects a few bit players from GLADIATOR, TROY, 300, 13nth WARRIOR,Rome (the series) of course. Good movie if you're an Anglophile watchit, no TIMMY I don't have any candy I said ANGLO-PHILE.

Jeff Shannon 09 May 2012

Through it all, Paul Giamatti spits bilious fury as a ruthless king with a mile-wide mean streak and an army of Danish mercenaries. What's not to like?

sissonskevin 06 May 2012

Violent chick flick

I might have liked this film but for the "moving camera" style ofshooting it. But then we might have noticed more inaccuracies and pooracting. I've noticed a trend in historical films that the directorstake a small bit of history and then tweak it to keep the historicallyignorant interested. This is why I read books and why so many don't.Enjoying these movies would be improbable if people actually readhistory. Anywho, this was a bad film but if it had bigger actors itmight have made more $$$. Read more books people. This might be bad forthe economy as Hollywood does rely on the uneducated to by its crap.Ironcald is a stinker.

06 May 2012

Seven Samurai in Jolly Old England

"Ironclad" was met with lukewarm reviews from the press upon it's release. I understand their criticisms but it didn't stop my enjoyment one iota.Here's the scoop. In 1215 King John is forced to sign the Magna Carta. He's really upset about this and hires a bunch of Danish mercenaries to take over a strategically positioned castle so he can re-gain the country and treat everybody like crap once again. The problem lies in the fact that said castle is being held by a small band of disparate individuals led by a Knight Templar and they are going to put the monkey in the wrench. Will they hold the castle? Will the French arrive in time to save the day? Will the Templar break his vows and get his ashes hauled by the local damsel? I liked this movie quite a bit. Is it true to history? Probably not, but it's a fun ride nonetheless. When it was originally released in theaters I had reservations about Paul Giamatti as King John. My reservations were unfounded. He's his usual great self and has one scene in particular that is astounding. The rest of the cast is easily as good. James Purefoy as the Templar hit all the right notes for my money. And check out these other names. Brian Cox, Derek Jacobi, Mackenzie Crook, Jason Flemyng, Charles Dance et al are just part of this fine (and expensive) ensemble. This might be an Historical Epic but it's a guy flick through and through. The fight scenes are intense and there are more dismemberments and cleavings than in any ten other movies. Believe you me, this is one gory outing with buckets o' blood. Some objected to the hand held camera work during the battle scenes but it didn't bother me. It's an expensive movie with a really good "look" to it. The final couple of scenes were a bit too 'Hollywood', but by then the movie is over so..... who cares. The music score is great and I liked the script a lot. There are certain scenes, save for those pesky last couple, that were written as well as anything I've seen in any other movie. This might not be for everyone but it's way better than I expected and I could easily see putting this in my library.

Acks King 01 May 2012

King Jhon pillages England with the sanction of the Pope who's got nothing better to do than play petty politics.

Just another one of those anti-church movies which seem to be in vogueamong producers. The greedy Pope who leads the church wants to accumulate wealth, landand influence, so he turns a blind eye to the suffering of the people,sanctions King John to pillage England and excommunicates Bishops forthe fun of it. Along comes our little templar, fights like a maniac,thinks he serves God, has taken vow of chastity unless its some royalslut who wants to get laid and turns the tide in whomsoever's favor.This movie's gonna leave you dazed and confused. The characters are allrobotic like a video game, everything moves into place just for thesake of it. The only saving grace is Vladimir Kulich, I was rooting forhis character. The only spoiler is the movie itself.

koalaxxx 01 May 2012

Passable Overall

Pros: 1. Nice scenery 2. Nice plot 3. Realistic brutal fightingCons: (Spoilers here) 1. Predictable outcome a-The French army shouldbetter not arrive that'd be much better. b-Although predictable it waskind of nice that the templar saved the lady, however it could havebeen put in a different way.2. Avoidable crucial senseless irrational fight results in advance. TheDanish seem ruthless, strong and fierce. Hard to put the Danish down inthe opening scenes boosting respect and admiration for our heroes.a-Guy must have been slaughtered in the first few raids, it's quiteirrational that an inexperienced kid learning to fight so well in a fewhours and even survive - I can't understand this - at the end. b-LadyIsabel and other women don't even know how to balance a blade howeverwhen Danish get inside the keep, all the females grab a weapon andstart slicing down the Danish like butter and cake. They killed manyDanish soldiers before they got themselves killed, are u kidding? Thismust be a joke. I dropped two points in overall rating just because ofthat. I could give even 8 if they didn't let such nonsense slip in themovie. They could really avoid this comedy, it really ruins theatmosphere.

Geoff Berkshire 01 May 2012

Fetishizes the various ways in which men can be skewered by medieval weaponry

ghasl1 30 April 2012

Exhausting, Cliché, Melodramatic Film

For viewer purposes the torture scenes and the burning alive pigs mightdistress some viewers. Story is moronic 20 guys (not all professionalwarriors) garrison a castle without a moat, have to wait forreinforcements which take several months and they have little food,equipment and they don't even have English longbows against a thousanddanish viking warriors with trebuchets, siege tower's, ladders andheaps of archers.Why did the small unit of rebels even bother occupying a castle tobegin with. They don't come up with a plan or discuss it. The castle isnot huge, its not even built on a hill or a mountain. Its like watchinsomeone dig a hole that they cant get out of. The rebel unit trapsthemselves inside the castle walls without any sort of idea how to goagainst incredible odds and then not use fear as a tactic or alludeenemies into thinking you have a higher number of men. Not even havecountermeasures against a battering ram. Instead they just get moweddown one by one just like that korean movie Musa.Its all melodramatic throughout the whole movie because everyone isnearly dead and its cliché in the end were the only surviving knightgets the lady and his companion squire lives. King John is evil butdoesn't even bother mentioning King Richard not even once even thoughthe knight himself is a templar. If you liked Game of Thrones this is definitely not for you its morelike the movie Centurion in terms of action and gore but even then notas good as that.

Ty Burr 22 April 2012

As history it's bunk; as inappropriate historical fiction, it's awfully close to comedy.

Devin Faraci 22 April 2012

Ironclad is the sort of movie where they behand three people in a row.

21 April 2012

Bloody

People bring up Braveheart to describe the bloodiness of this movie and I think it is not even close. Braveheart is tame compared to some of the graphic violence in this movie. Being that it is a lower budget movie, I think they did a great job with the special effects and CGI. They also did a great job in portraying how dirty and grimy everything was during this time. It was nice to see a tale with King John that did not involve the Robin Hood fable. The acting was strong, with some familiar faces from King Arthur, The 13th Warrior and the always strong Paul Giamatti. Yes the tale is not entirely historically accurate, but how many movies are? Braveheart used bits and pieces of true history to cobble a good story. Spartacus, Alexander and all of the others take liberties with history to make a story more interesting. True history is not always best and satisfying for a two hour movie. Also I wanted to address the one review that said that the foreign army was complete fiction. That is not entirely true, John made a big use of a lot of foreign mercenaries. Maybe not to the extent of the movie, but there is certainly truth in it.

Sam Adams 21 April 2012

Unfortunately, a narrative needs characters as well as plot, and that's where Ironclad falls off its horse.

20 April 2012

Medieval slaughter-fest!

In this fictionalized tale, a Knight Templar leads a small band of rebels in the defense of Rochester Castle against a mercenary army of Danes in the service of King John.If you want bloody savage Medieval combat, with all the grusome gore that swords, axes, and maces can dish out, ...here it is! The battle scenes are quite graphic, with plenty of shattered skulls, splattered brains, crushed bones, and spraying of blood. And thats what REAL close-quarters fighting with melee weapons was!In the true historical event, there were far more fighting men defending Rochester. An estimated 190 knights held the walls, with all their sargeants and men-at-arms. Naturally, King John would need an even larger army to besiege the castle. At the time, it was considered the largest siege-operation ever carried out in England.Despite the fictional nature of this particular film, it was still a movie I would watch again and again.

19 April 2012

Entertaining, but beset by problems

England, 1215. Facing rebellion and insurrection, King John signs a formal document outlining the limits of his royal power, the Magna Carta. Within months he has repudiated the document and brought in an army of Danish mercenaries to isolate and destroy the nobles who forced him to sign it, one-by-one. Thomas Marshall, a Knight Templar, and Baron d'Aubigny vow to oppose the invasion and take control of Rochester Castle, the gateway out of southern England. John must take the castle or risk his lines of supply being cut off behind him. So begins a furious siege, with twenty defenders holding out against an attacking army of a thousand with little hope of relief.Ironclad is a medieval war film, depicting King John's Siege of Rochester in 1215 during the First Barons' War. This siege was notable as John personally commanded the siege and prosecuted the siege with unusual vigour. Unable to simply wait the garrison out, he undertook to take the castle by storm. He employed a full battery of medieval tactics to take the castle, including scaling ladders, siege engines, mines and even burning pigs (used to help breach the keep from underneath). It was a brutal, ugly siege which Ironclad depicts reasonably convincingly.The film stars the ever-reliable James Purefoy (notable for his stunning turn as the verbose and debauched Mark Antony from the HBO series Rome), cast against type as the quiet, intense and conflicted Marshall, very loosely based on a real historical figure of the same name. Marshall is a Knight Templar who no longer feels he is worthy to be a member of the order, and is tortured by his feelings for women and his inability to keep his vow of silence. He pretty much spends the whole film exchanging scenes of angst with scenes of slaughtering hordes of attacking conscripts (and occasional Danish mercenaries). This structure risks cheese - and a distinct aroma of Stilton starts to rise during the painfully cliched will they-won't they romantic scenes with the lord's sexually-frustrated wife, Lady Isabel (played with enthusiasm but little subtlety by Kate Mara) - but Purefoy's notable screen presence just about manages to keep things ticking along.The rest of the cast is surprisingly distinguished. Brian Cox is in his element as the old warhorse assembling a team of scoundrels and criminals to defend the castle, whilst Derek Jacobi plays the lord of Rochester Castle who is upset by his peaceful fortress being turned into a warzone. Charles Dance has a sterling turn as Archbishop Langdon, whilst Jason Flemyng gives a solid performance as Becket, the most dubious of the castle defenders. Outshining everyone else, however, is Paul Giamatti who gives a passionate performance as King John. The utter rage John feels at having been forced to limit the powers of the throne (the beginning of a movement which will ultimately lead to the English Civil War, four and a half centuries later) is palpable, and his increasing desperation to burn all trace of Magna Carta to ashes before he is militarily defeated is well-played.From a production standpoint, the film has to face the challenge of depicting a fairly brutal and savage siege on a relatively limited budget. Director Jonathan English makes the most of his resources, however, creating a superb set for the siege itself. It can be seen where costs were cut during the battle sequences (most notably the use of slightly fake-looking CGI for the flaming siege weapons), but overall the film manages to sell the illusion it is trying to create.From the viewpoint of historical accuracy, the film takes a fair number of liberties. The number of defenders of the castle was much higher in reality (between 100 and 150) and, although John did succeed in reducing the castle to a ruin, he ultimately failed to take the castle by assault and had to starve the last defenders out. He also didn't massacre the surviving garrison, having been persuaded that to do so would risk reprisals if he was captured in the battles to come. Most notably, the film depicts the defenders holding out hopes for an imminent French intervention, where in reality the French did not dispatch troops until many months later. Arguably the real events could have been used to tell a more interesting and dramatic cinematic story, but the budget and time restrictions of the movie did not allow this.Ironclad (***) is therefore a movie which has a lot of problems. The romance is shoehorned unconvincingly into the narrative and Kate Mara's character is given little to do outside of it. The film also takes more liberties with historical accuracy than some may feel comfortable with. Against that most of the performances are extremely strong (Giamatti in particular) and the battle sequences are well-staged. Ultimately it entertains, if you can overcome the urge to wince at its failings. The movie is available now in the UK (DVD, Blu-Ray) and USA (DVD, Blu-Ray).

Leslie Felperin 19 April 2012

Ironclad might be the perfect actioner for gorehound fanboys gaga for medieval trappings, but all others may find this British-American-German co-production a bit of a drag.

19 April 2012

Potent Small Scale 'Braveheart'

One of the better Medieval period-films I've seen. Accurate to the point of being disgusting - and I'm more the pleased for it. Bloody, savage and brutal. No singing, no ridiculous troupes of dancing fools, no Renaissance Faires. This is what it was like: Gray, dingy and grim for the vast majority of people.I'm always amazed at the folks who populate these reenactment camps - happily deceiving themselves by completely ignoring the truth. I want to see a Medieval Festival where urine and feces are randomly dropped onto people - to see streets of mud filled with the same. I want to know that the people there have no dental hygiene as we know it - not even a tooth brush. So how bad do you want to hug someone now? I want to smell headache-inducing amounts of perfume in an attempt to cover up rank body odor. I want to know the dry foodstuffs are infested with mites and grubs, and that the wet foods may or may not be rancid and/or infected with bacterial viruses. Clothes and bodies infested with fleas, skin covered in acne pustules, and a general brutality against the weak.That's partly why I enjoyed 'Ironclad' - it didn't paint a rosy picture. The other reason: Ever since the cancellation of my much-lamented 'Rome', I've been hoping to see James Purefoy again. The guy is serious kick-ass. If there really were a comet-striking-the-earth-event, Purefoy is the dude I'd want to be around. I honestly see him clawing his way to the top of any primitive heap. Particularly enjoyed the story, a good one for once, about the righteousness of the Knights Templar. They've taken a pretty mean beating in the media these past few years - character assassination seven-hundred years after they were betrayed and destroyed. To quote Wikipedia regarding the Chinon Parchments, "It is currently the Catholic Church position that the medieval persecution of the Knights Templar was unjust; that there was nothing inherently wrong with the Order or its Rule; and that Pope Clement was pressured into his actions by the magnitude of the public scandal and the dominating influence of King Philip IV".So 'Ironclad' gives us a look at a true Templar - a holy knight of stout spirit and strong arm; a moral warrior with the clarity that comes from purity of vision. And I'm genuinely gratified to the filmmakers for this honest perspective. And, yes, I get the irony of this story sitting dead-center in the continual revisionist histories of King John.The rest of the ragtag band of warriors reads like an all-star cast of every period film made in the last twenty-years: Brian Cox, Jayson Fleming, Mackenzie Crook, Jamie Foreman, John Pierce Jones, Derek Jacobi and the always enjoyable Charles Dance. Each were superlative in their deliveries; much appreciated and enjoyed. Now to the weaker elements.I honestly cannot see Paul Giamatti as anything other than a strong character actor - I can't - and I've really tried. I like the man! But productions like this proves, at least in my mind, that he's seriously overrated. It's great that a 'regular guy' like him gets to step up and play the big parts (President John Adams comes to mind) but he's just too dang goofy to be believable. And as sincere as his energetic performance was in 'Ironclad', he seemed diminutive in the role. I enjoy his bad guy performances so much more when they're fitted to him - not the other way around. If you get a chance to see 'Shoot 'Em Up', you'll understand what I mean. As a medieval King Of England, he's just not suited.One aspect of his performance that I found intriguing: In the film, both introduction and curtain call for his character, has John standing and staring into shallow water. I wonder why? Reflective introspection?And I still don't get how Kate Mara continually finds herself work. I have nothing against her personally, but she just doesn't connote a leading actress presence. Screened nearly a half-dozen productions with her as both lead and supporting actor - everything screams 'average'. Nothing pops, nothing sizzles. She's reminiscent of watching a kid sister in the school play.Overall, an excellent film done on a small budget. Another $20 million and we would've gotten a larger, more authentic Rochester stage, fuller armies and a bigger splash. But I'm pleased with what they were able to achieve with what they had; filmmakers maximizing their resources is always appreciated.