Barbarossa

First, while I only gave this film 5 stars, it really isn't bad. Apart from an instance where a horse made a sound I considered unlikely under the circumstances based on my experience with them, my beef is that this movie is so much less than what it could have been. It could have been an epic, but they missed the bar. It could also have made a good patriotic film such as the Russian film 1612, had they shifted the focus a little more on the Milanese and slightly less on Barbarossa, filmed it in Italian (It is an Italian film, after all.), and livened it up a tad.

Bottom line, if you're a fan of this sort of movie as I am, watch it. It isn't that great, but I do not regret the time spent watching it. It just could have been better. If, on the other hand, you feel no attraction to films of this type, and are merely looking for a good movie to burn some time on, you might want to look elsewhere. Not to scare you off, though. Who knows, you might enjoy it.

If you like this movie, try 1612. That is the movie I was most reminded of watching this one.

The only reason I didn't give this a "1" was because some of the cinematography was decent. However, even the best cinematography can't save a film from truly bad acting, a horrible script, poor directing and sloppy editing.

The only good acting I saw in this movie came from F. Murray Abraham. All the rest were... well, not even good amateurs. They seemed to have no training or experience in acting at all. Their characters were entirely unbelievable.

I'm not the least bit surprised to see that this flick lost money. Someone should do us all a favor and lose all the prints, copies, DVDs, etc. Don't waste any portion of your life on this movie -- find something, anything else to watch.

A credible epic that concerns the German warlord Barbarossa and his extended empire (that reached deep into Europe). A fab acting performance by Raz Degan but not such a great script. Ultimately these type of movies live or die in the battle scenes and these are not the most exciting or memorable.

There was a lot of the same horse sound effects being used for every single horse scene (of which there are many).

The end battle scene was OK. It just took 120 minutes to get there. So whilst waiting for the big money scene, you are forced to sit through a boring, impossible romance, some boring politics, some peasants trying to take on the bad guys, and one peasant fellow who was probably the most useless character in the entire movie.

Not one of the characters was engaging. The movie spends a lot of time with a feral witch female character who looks like she was born in the jungle. She spends a lot of time crawling around on all fours like a rabid mutt, sniffing the ground and her boyfriend, and peering at the camera through dirty oily curtains of hair. She also spends the majority of time wearing a potato sack for clothes. What exactly did the BF see in this dirty little rat creature again? Oh, and she had magical powers.

After the prerequisite love scene (interspersed with the death of her sister, how utterly original) you'd think things would start moving. Nope, it takes another hour. The end is an impossible-to-read narration of events that happens, but at least our hero lives happily ever after with his feral wife and they have lots of children together.

This looked like it was made for TV. The production values were strangely cheap looking and the same locations were used to portray totally different places. How utterly boring.

1/10

Let me first say that I watched this film with no preconceptions about it whatsoever - what I knew was that it was about emperor Friederich I, "Barbarossa" ("some German king from the dark ages, wasn't he?"). So, I watched this as a very entertaining view into a sadly forgotten part of history, this fight over the lands how they had become when the Roman Empire was crumbling leaving a massive power vacuum and the German tribes had begun to finally become united.

The film depicted this fight over the desolated areas in northern Italy as far as I can tell very well, showing both the reasoning of Emperor Barbarossa and his queen Beatrix (who appears to have been his personal cheer-leader) and the opposing side, the Company of Death, a loosely formed army from the Italian city states. This opposing side bears a strong resemblance to both the historical American Revolution from which it seemed like they loaned half of the freedom slogans, as well as from Braveheart, which probably provided the other half. Don't get me wrong, I like freedom, but one can only do so much with it, and the cries for freedom became a little silly at times - especially since it appeared to me that they only went to war because they didn't like to be taxed by a German emperor...

Speaking of which: The film is called Barbarossa, but most of the film and the very evident sympathies, lies with Barbarossa's enemies. This is not a biography film, but it would have earned even better marks if it would have been.

So, how was it then? It was grand in scope, ranging in at several years and the SFX - especially the 'Bagdhad by Night - medieval style' sequences were great. However, using such large time frames makes one loose sight on events and details, which is a shame.

Rutger Hauer makes an excellent, if somewhat downplayed Barbarossa, and the rest of the cast make solid performances - no one mentioned, no one forgotten.

It will take a couple of hours to sit thorough this film, but those are hours well spent.