[With medieval action film Ironclad entering into limited US theatrical release tomorrow we revisit Kurt Halfyard's previous review.]
Without missing a beat, Johnathan English's Ironclad picks up right where Ridley Scott's Robin Hood
left off. It is certainly not an official sequel, but golly, it could
be the swaggering, slightly drunken, trashier sibling if you swap in a
scowling James Purfoy for a scowling Russel Crowe. King John (Giamatti)
has signed the Magna Carta, but at the behest of the Pope in Rome has
declared the document invalid and is marching across the land with a
small army of Danish mercenaries, killing all the Barons who signed it.
In the meantime, the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dance), orders one of
the few remaining Baron Cox) and the best Knight Templar (Purefoy) in
the land and orders them to defend Rochester Castle at all costs. (As
Rochester goes, so goes England). Failing to raise an army, only a few
ragtag adventurers and scoundrels (from the Office's Mackenzie Crook to
the ubiquitous Jason Flemying who seems contractually obliged to be in
all of these types of movies), they arrive at Rochester just as John and
his army show up. Thus for well over half of the two hour duration,
the film is an action packed castle siege film that pits about 20 men
against several hundred, and bravery, blood and battle over anything
resembling restraint or good taste.
"What a tedious little man!" snarls Brian Cox after
dealing-slash-politicking against Paul Giamatti for the hearts and minds
of the British peasantry. Far from it, to enjoy Ironclad is to embrace
one of the most ridiculous, yet delightful moments of over-the-top
royalty since Graham Chapman and the Pythons (clearly a film that
Ironclad is subtly nodding at while its plethora of arterial sprays and
limb severings, even as it plays everything else decidedly straight.)
Giamatti and Cox join a host of celebrated english capital "A" actors
such as Charles Dance and Derek Jacobi along to occasionally bark at
each other through its orgy of violence. The film is hilarious, yet
deadly earnest, the type of bloody heroic wet dream of 14 year olds,
with the type of posturing put forth by the WWE or Mel Gibson.
A romantic
subplot is clumsily shoe-horned between the local Lord's (Jacobi
channelling Claudius without the stutter) young and unsatisfied wife,
played tediously and far to prettily by Kate Mara and the chaste Templar
mainly her stroking his sword, while he hastily tries to put it back
into the scabbard. No, I'm not kidding. It's comedy gold. Why this
is going while on a dozen or so survivors are being starved to death by
the encircling army both look hale and pretty and movie star like.
Mainly though, the Knight Templar wants to stick is sword into swarthy
the swarthy Dane (Vladimir Kulich) and there is an epic sweaty tango
there, but I don't think the (t)horny metaphor is on hand for that one.
But a movie like this is not aiming to be high art, it is going to
entertain with over-the-top acts of heroism and beating the enemy over
the head with his own severed arm. On that count, the film delivers in
an very old-school, matinee fashion. Sir Brian Cox's squire upon the
witnessing the bloody first defense of Rochester's walls comments,
"Nobody could recover after witnessing bloodshed such this as this."
But when the film earns a few unintentional laughs at the earnestness
to which it strives for but never quite achieves, you will likely
recover and ask for more! You may even want to gather a few of your
movie going mates by your side and some over-sized beers to enjoy the
slick carnage. Ironclad is unpretentious entertainment loudly
realized by falling on the sword of its own pretentiousness. Somehow
by the end of the film it has hit all of its cliche (yet fist pumping)
character notes, done everything you might expect of it, only to win you
aboard. With David Gordon Green's Your Highness coming out to take the
piss out of this type self-serious fantasy movie, Jonathan English has
proven that you can have your cake and eat it too.