20 August 2014. Uwe Boll's third directorial effort on his In the Name of King Franchise and in this case again using a magical time travel theme, he uses to great effect the on site location of Bulgaria that gives a cinematic authenticity and richness to foreign and historical period of the movie. Dominic Purcell attempts to hold up his character throughout the movie and does quite well at the beginning with its raw martial arts combat and assassin demeanor.
The photo cinematography is noteworthy, the brief flash back at the beginning of the movie is well done and its use relatively never done. For a while the awkward time culture clash especially the horse riding scenes are brilliant and comical in their balanced emotive relief and again later with the chicken soap reference. The first two-thirds of the movie, the script holds up well with a few weaknesses, like Purcell's leaving fingerprints because he doesn't use gloves, the sudden and abrupt transition in the use of duck tape, and the less than convincing reaction to a dragon or first single handed combat with an ancient warrior, and rather questionable first kissing scene.
Besides an intrusive shaky use of the camera, eventually the script becomes lazy as well as the direction as Purcell's character fails to offer up a credible leadership performance or professional assassin level planning, and even overlooking the possibility of creating gun powder with superior advanced science knowledge. Instead the script descends into more of the typical butchering combat with not real distinction of Purcell's abilities and becomes a brown and power over sophisticated assassin mentality allowing himself to become ambushed and the scriptwriter appears to desperately resort to the dragon appearance to get our hero and his followers out of an impossible situation and adding the implausible entrance into a castle.
Overall, the movie has a comprehensible thread, starts well, but just runs out of substance by the end. One would be better entertained by Déjà vu (2006), Demolition Man (1993), Black Death (2010), The Book of Eli (2010), The Matrix (1999); The Chronicles of Naria: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (2005); and Spirited Away (2001).
