IRONCLAD

Dir. Jonathan English UK/USA 2011

I'm happy to live in an era where even low-budget films have the means to make history look and feel realistic. This is the primary saving grace of Ironclad, a film with a solid premise and a fun cast that manages to never really gel.

Set in England shortly after John I (the evil Robin Hood king, for those of you who learn history via other movies) signed the Magna Carta, the film deals with the First Barons' War, which erupted after John tried to reclaim control of the country from the newly empowered nobles. Specifically, Ironclad is a siege film, depicting the pivotal Siege of Rochester during the winter of 1215. Leading the cast is James Purefoy as Marshall, a Templar Knight who finds himself adrift after the Crusades and seeking vengeance for his fellow knights who were slain by the king. John is played by Paul Giamatti, who has plenty of fun turning him into a snarling, bitter megalomaniac. Also on hand are the always great Brian Cox as a rebel lord and British character actors Jason Flemyng and Mackenzie Crook as some of the rag-tag peasants assembled to defend the castle.

Now, I'm a big sucker for siege movies, so I was pretty excited about this going in. And if you go into this movie knowing what's good and and what's bad, it could actually be pretty enjoyable. The director opts for the shaky-cam, Bourne-style shooting when it comes to the action scenes, which isn't too bad when you've got guys fighting hand-to-hand. The editing is a little sloppy at points, but overall, it works. The violence itself is the highlight of the film. You will find no gory discretion shots here. The film is adamant about showing you exactly what a mace or an ax will do to somebody's face. Some of the blood sprays were definitely CGI, but all of the injuries were done with very impressive prosthetics and practical effects. If you're in it for the action alone, I'd say it delivers.

The rest... gets a little spotty. The gaping hole of lameness in this film is the relationship between James Purefoy's character and the Lady of Rochester, played by Kate Mara. Now, love stories generally feel superfluous from the start in action/war movies, but if the acting and writing are strong, they can be made interesting. Not so here. I haven't seen Kate Mara in much else, but she's extremely flat in this film, and what little chemistry she has with James Purefoy is kind of awkward and weird. The worst part is that SO MUCH TIME is devoted to their relationship, and I can't imagine that anyone watching this movie would care about it. Especially since the film already feels a bit too long with its 2 hour run time, I do not understand why they didn't trim this plot down, if not jettison it all together. If they wanted to keep the long runtime, I'd've much preferred it spent on building the relationships between the men defending the castle.

The rest of the cast is pretty solid, but the writing does them a disservice by not really fleshing out their characters to the degree that it should. James Purefoy, badass as he is, seems somewhat miscast as a silent, brooding Templar, especially given the affable villainy he brought to the role of Mark Antony in HBO's Rome. Paul Giamatti is the performance that makes the movie, playing King John as a Napoleonic super-villain. He's got a giant rant about two-thirds of the way through the movie that he completely knocks out of the park. He manages to seem like he's taking the role very seriously while also seeming like he's having the time of his life. And even though his character was extremely stock, I was rooting for Aneurin Barnard as Guy the squire, the idealistic young kid who wants to fight for honor and democracy. As I said, the character is stock, and his modern ideas about democracy are very anachronistic, but I thought his relationship with Marshall was one of the better ones in the film. That being said, this movie does go the Braveheart/Gladiator route of giving the good guys all these lofty ideals about freedom and democracy that wouldn't have been common nearly a millennia ago. It's not as egregious as the religious views of some of the characters in Kingdom of Heaven, which positions its characters to the left of most modern Americans, but it's still a little annoying.

Ultimately, if you're looking for some vicious Medieval action, I'd say Ironclad is well worth your time. Just maybe fast forward through any scene that just has James Purefoy and Kate Mara.

UP NEXT: The Green Hornet and Attack The Block.