I even own a bunch of low-budget, cheesy dragon-slaying movies, simply because I enjoy the tone they set. Now, that doesn't mean they're good, but they serve their purpose. And they're surprisingly abundant, which makes sense since I'm pretty sure most of them are just filmed at the local Renaissance Festival, and apparently, John Rhys-Davies will work for mead and The King's Fried Pickles.
While John Rhys-Davies is sadly absent from "Black Death," it stars an actor who I like even better: Sean Bean. And for those of you who are saying "who is that," screw you, that's who. It's not like this guy hasn't been in some huge freaking movies. He's just one of those actors who shows up a lot, but nobody really knows who he is. If you are having trouble placing him, he's the guy who dies in nearly every movie he's in. Yeah, that's the guy.
"No, it's totally cool. I wouldn't expect you to remember me from Lord of The Freaking Rings..."
Sean Bean is an actor I find wonderfully charismatic, even when he's brooding, which he normally is. What I love about him most is his intensity. When his characters go off the deep end, he's freaking scary. Him and Liam Neeson need to do a movie together. That would basically be the best thing ever.
"Black Death" is a movie that really feels like "The 13th Warrior" in both tone and visuals. It's a very cold looking movie, even though there's no snow, and the air just seems thick and heavy. The deep greens and browns of the surrounding forest landscape help with that, as does the wardrobe and design of the characters, who dress mostly in black over their mud-smeared, dull armor. This is a movie that you feel like you need to scrape the dirt off the camera lense in order to see everything. I dig the hell out of the look, and it's a very pretty movie to look at.
The story concerns a monk named Osmund, played by Eddie Redmayne, who's town is ravaged by the black plague. Wanting to leave, he joins a group of soldiers led by Sean Bean, who are on a mission to capture a necromancer who is reportedly bringing the dead back to life, in a town on the edge of a swamp which has mysteriously not been touched yet by the plague. As the story progresses, faith is shaken and the nature of good and evil is explored as the mystery of the necromancer is uncovered.
While "Black Death" is slightly by-the-numbers, in the end it does what it sets out to do very well. It's a very well cast film, with Eddie Remayne and Sean Bean both giving fantastic performances, but the rest of the cast, including Emun Elliott (who was in both "Game of Thrones" and "Prometheus"), was very solid as well. I particularly enjoyed John Lynch (one of the dwarfs in "Snow White & The Huntsman") as the resident bad-ass of the group who carried around a ridiculously overly-serrated short sword that looked more likely to catch on something and get him killed rather than do more damage to someone. But he bit off a piece of someone's neck during a fight, and that's awesome.
Speaking of which, the violence was acceptably brutal for the genre, but never went too overboard with it. There are scenes that could have gotten really grim and disgusting really, really quickly, but since director Christopher Smith knows what he's doing, the violence manages to be disturbing and hard-hitting without actually showing all that much, at least compared to some other ultra-violent splatter-fests.
I also have to give the movie credit for having a pretty effective "I'm not quite sure what to believe anymore" twist near the end of the film, which might pave the way for some good discussion afterwords. And the final end of the film was just unexpected and messed up enough to be really awesome. I'm sure not everyone would agree, but as far as fitting the theme of what the nature of good and evil truly is, it is an ending that really works. It's the rare film that has an epilogue that makes you say "Dude, they need to make that into a movie!"
And yeah, Sean Bean dies. It's not really a spoiler at this point. He dies in every dang movie, and I've seen him die a lot, but "Black Death" contains one of the most epic Sean Bean deaths ever. Not only is it completely hardcore the way this guy goes out, but he has a moment of self-satisfaction beforehand, culminating in the line "I am Death" which is just awesomely bad ass. I always hate to see him go in a movie, but as long as his death scene is sweet, it was all worth it.
He is the only man to have been shot in the face by Batman through a book of Yeats poetry. So far.
THE BOTTOM LINE - I liked "Black Death." It's the kind of movie I can just kick back, drink a glass of wine and escape into a dark fantasy. It ain't high art, but it's entertaining as hell. Recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment