Alright
Summary
The movie is shot undeniably well, Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer shine, but the film meanders, and Matthew Broderick feels miscast.
Plot: A brave swordsman (Rutger Hauer) recruits a thief (Matthew Broderick) to help him and his love (Michelle Pfeiffer) break a curse from a wicked clergyman (John Wood).
Review: I’d heard some good things about this movie, and Richard Donner directs it, so I had high hopes for it.
Well, the movie is undeniably pretty to look at. I don’t know who Donner got to do the cinematography (looks up the answer on Wikipedia…Vittorio Storaro…okay, he’s fantastic), but this movie is shot to the nines. Everything is framed perfectly and looks like the production budget was $300 million. I swear, there isn’t a bad shot in the entire movie. It’s that good.
The cast does their best. I think that Rutger Hauer brought it as the hero of the movie – he had intensity, pathos, and presence. He clearly believes in his character’s plight and gives it his all in his performance. Michelle Pfeiffer doesn’t have much to do, but she’s stunning and ethereal, which is the entire arc of her character, so it works. Matthew Broderick, on the other hand…yeah. I felt he was badly miscast. He kept trying to do this English accent that came and went more often than the cuts in the movie. He constantly made asides to God, and it quickly became annoying. I felt like this was a prep role for his turn as Ferris Bueller, rather than a legitimate part in this movie.
The curse was quite interesting – I won’t reveal what it was if you haven’t seen the film, but it’s unique and intriguing. However, whatever forward momentum the movie had is instantly crushed by its pacing. At 120 minutes, the movie is too long. It needed to cut a good thirty minutes and get on with it. It seemed that Broderick, Hauer, and the hawk were just wandering around for a while. They meet a former friend of Hauer’s and Pfeiffer’s, and he joins them in wandering. This is after the point of the movie is made quite clear, you know who the bad guy is, what the objective is, etc. So, why the wandering? To convince Broderick’s character to buy into the quest? It’s not like he had anything better to do with his time! Ugh…it just felt like runtime for the sake of runtime.
I also wasn’t a fan of the music. I get it, it was a modern soundtrack for a medieval adventure – how unique! It wasn’t as if I wanted sitar music or the sounds of Gregorian chants (though Gregorian chants were part of the music), but giving it this rock tonality felt weird, especially given how relaxed the movie was. I mean, if it was an epic quest with lots of fighting and chest-beating, fine, but this was more like three dudes on a stroll through the lush countryside. It didn’t fit for me.
It sounds like I hated this movie; I didn’t. It was alright. Just alright, though, and it should have been more. With this cast, with this director and cinematographer, a lot more. You can check it out if you’re curious, but one view is enough for me.