I love historical movies, on condition (apart from decent acting, script and settings) that the average viewer should be able to understand what historically is going on. Here unfortunately this is not the case, as least in my opinion.
Story and script are the biggest problem. In stead of simplifying the tumultuous historical period that this movie is about, they made it even more complicated, with an abundant dropping of names of persons that a layman in history hasn't heard of ever before, and who are neither properly explained nor introduced, while the characters that we see have such vague backgrounds that their actions and interactions for the most part stay incomprehensible.
Tom McKay as Taranis Maldras is clearly meant to be the hero of the story, but he has hardly any dialogue, spends half of the movie chained in a dungeon and in the end just leaves the movie in gloomy silence (after which instantly the closing credits appear!). There are way too many sex-scenes that have no function whatsoever and are endlessly stretched in time, to the point of getting more boring than exciting. I guess the makers have watched notorious series like "Rome" and "Spartacus" very closely and wanted to recreate the same atmosphere of decadency, but with the very limited means in this movie the result is rather thin and lackluster, everything like settings and costumes and even the colors of the movie looks cheap and uninspired. As the bickering and scheming couple Maximus and his wife Urbina Brian Caspe and Michelle Lukes are the only positive thing in this movie and make the best of their parts, but cannot save this movie.
One wonders what people were aiming at, when they took up this project, and how anybody can have looked with pride and satisfaction at the result.
Story and script are the biggest problem. In stead of simplifying the tumultuous historical period that this movie is about, they made it even more complicated, with an abundant dropping of names of persons that a layman in history hasn't heard of ever before, and who are neither properly explained nor introduced, while the characters that we see have such vague backgrounds that their actions and interactions for the most part stay incomprehensible.
Tom McKay as Taranis Maldras is clearly meant to be the hero of the story, but he has hardly any dialogue, spends half of the movie chained in a dungeon and in the end just leaves the movie in gloomy silence (after which instantly the closing credits appear!). There are way too many sex-scenes that have no function whatsoever and are endlessly stretched in time, to the point of getting more boring than exciting. I guess the makers have watched notorious series like "Rome" and "Spartacus" very closely and wanted to recreate the same atmosphere of decadency, but with the very limited means in this movie the result is rather thin and lackluster, everything like settings and costumes and even the colors of the movie looks cheap and uninspired. As the bickering and scheming couple Maximus and his wife Urbina Brian Caspe and Michelle Lukes are the only positive thing in this movie and make the best of their parts, but cannot save this movie.
One wonders what people were aiming at, when they took up this project, and how anybody can have looked with pride and satisfaction at the result.