I loved this movie! It is for all of us who suffered through compulsory Shakespeare in school. The needless suffering of intentionally disastrous endings marked Shakespeare's tragedies. Those stories were so horribly sad on every level that they reduced life and all its ambitions to an expectation of sorrowful failure. Everyone dies for little or no reason. I totally hated that crap! This is apparently a story related to Hamlet. I never knew it existed. I noticed the similarities straight away and kept anticipating needless tragedy. Needless tragedy never came. I don't know if I would have liked it if not for my knowledge of Shakespeare's Hamlet and my general contempt for needless tragedy.
The story followed an almost fable-like formula. It was production on the fly with a great economy of scale. That is to say the scenes had just enough to carry the story and no more. The fight scenes and swordplay are very different from today's carefully choreographed, terribly graphic violence. During one of the fight scenes, I wondered if this scrappy, badly improvised fighting was actually more realistic than what we normally get from big productions. All the real fights I have seen looked nothing like a movie fight due to the considerable clumsiness of the fighters.
This movie had witty and clever moments. I thought they fit well within the main context of a revenge plot. Of course, they could have spent more money and had a larger production but why bother? I think it would be cool if Royal Deceit could run this summer in place of Shakespeare in the Park's Hamlet. It could make people happy for a change.
This reminded me of some delightful Viking tales I discovered decades ago. Tales of individual heroism, conquest, love and so on. Fables are fun! And finally something not completely nihilistic from IFC. What a relief that was.
The story followed an almost fable-like formula. It was production on the fly with a great economy of scale. That is to say the scenes had just enough to carry the story and no more. The fight scenes and swordplay are very different from today's carefully choreographed, terribly graphic violence. During one of the fight scenes, I wondered if this scrappy, badly improvised fighting was actually more realistic than what we normally get from big productions. All the real fights I have seen looked nothing like a movie fight due to the considerable clumsiness of the fighters.
This movie had witty and clever moments. I thought they fit well within the main context of a revenge plot. Of course, they could have spent more money and had a larger production but why bother? I think it would be cool if Royal Deceit could run this summer in place of Shakespeare in the Park's Hamlet. It could make people happy for a change.
This reminded me of some delightful Viking tales I discovered decades ago. Tales of individual heroism, conquest, love and so on. Fables are fun! And finally something not completely nihilistic from IFC. What a relief that was.