3/10
It's one thing for a film to be silly, but if it's as dull as this one is, then it hasn't got a lot going for it. And while I appreciate that Nicolas Cage has to keep the pay cheques coming in, there must be better ways of earning a living than appearing in this half baked pseudo-historical medieval horror/thriller which is about as much fun as a night with a knight.
Mr Cage is the knight in question. He and fellow warrior Ron Perlman are journeying back from the Crusades where they have belatedly realised that killing innocent people in the name of God is not necessarily a Good Thing. Passing through barren landscapes, they eventually discover that the plague has come to town (the year is 1344), and that there is a young woman who is suspected of being the cause of it. They are given the job of escorting her in a cage to a monastery where her guilt or innocence can be assessed. But the chances are that the monks aren't going to let her go free.
One of the many questions that afflicted me as I sat through this melange of cliche, fantasy and stupidity, was who exactly is this film for? It's the least convincing medieval film I've ever seen; the horror quota is low; there isn't any sex; the sword fights are impossible to follow; and apart from Nic, there is no one resembling a film star in sight. So I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that the film had been relegated to the tiniest screen in the multiplex, with an audience of about 11. You may read reviews suggesting that there guilty pleasures to be had from this film, to which I would simply reply - 'I wish'. Pleasures, whether guilty or innocent, would have been a treat. But when the high point of a film is the old wagon-dragged-across-a-crumbling-wooden-bridge-which-is-about-to-collapse routine, along with an implausibly pathetic devil, then we are truly barrel scraping.The whole thing is unrelentingly glum and dispirited, like a dog that has beaten so often that even five minutes of relief is a blessing.
And a final serious word of complaint. Women were burned as witches in their thousands in the Middle Ages, simply because they were women. To suggest that there was such a thing as witchcraft or demonic possession is as crass as the notion (also espoused here) that the Black Death was the work of Satan.
