Cuor di leone

This movie is perfect in almost every way, but one thing ruins it. First the good stuff: we have action, romance, evil, great locations and sets, a great Jerry Goldsmith score, and an original plot: what happens to children in war?

So how come the movie doesn't work? It's the pace. Everything in this movie happens at AN INCREDIBLY SLOW PACE. You'll get impatient and frustrated. And that ruins the wonderful feel everything else has built up.

What a shame. What a real shame.

I'm sure this movie was meant to be more exciting, but at less than 2 hours, it still drags. Perhaps it's because of the mediocre acting, or the low budget, or all the American accents, or the perpetual gray background. Okay, I understand that these were terrible times, but can't there be a little bit of brightness? You can watch evildoers get taken out by bits of rock, and just hope someone muffles the background music once in a while - trust me, it gets really distracting. And who wants to see hordes of starving and dying children? Overall, a tremendous disappointment.

This is probably the best fantasy movie set in a historical period that has been made. The story does not insult the audience by assuming they are ignorant, and requires that people actually pay attention.

Yes, the accents aren't entirely accurate. Yes, some things are not explained. Tough. The arms, armor, and tactics are accurate and properly executed. The duel between Robert and Matilda is both amusing and impressive. No Wirefu, no anachronistic eastern martial arts, nothing in the movie that doesn't belong.

Music is also excellent, and unlike LadyHawk, appropriate to the feel of the movie.

The only reason I can figure for this movie not being a bigger success is that people confused it with the Jean Clod Van-Dummie movie of the same name.

Lionheart - The Children's Crusade was an interesting find in a bargain bin at a video shop - a medieval epic that I'd never even heard of from the director of Patton, produced by Coppola and with music by Jerry Goldsmith. Looking it up on the IMDb, not many others have either: it only seems to have played a week in Detroit! Why? Well, the obvious reason is it's not very good.

Its got a solid script about a disgraced young French knight who finds himself leading a bunch of abandoned children to the Holy Land to join King Richard's crusade and coming up against Gabriel Byrne's disillusioned crusader turned child-slave-trader. But it often looks like chunks are missing, and the kids are pretty awful: Eric Stoltz very effeminate and uncharismatic as the lead, Dexter Fletcher irritating as the lovable Artful Dodger type and Nicola Cowper a one-woman petrified forest as the love interest - I've never, ever seen an actress stay as rigidly immobile or as impervious to emotion as this gal. It's like watching a beautifully made up corpse in early rigor mortis for 105 minutes. Only Deborah Moore seems to give it a bit of wellie as a tomboyish female whose far more manly than the hero.

Bits of it do work, and Byrne's dark knight character is genuinely interesting and gets all the best dialogue, but the main interest is Jerry Goldsmith's astonishingly good score, one of the best I've ever heard for an epic even if it disappears towards the end. Worth a look but set expectations on low.

This shockingly obscure film, especially when considering the talent behind the camera, and the lavish production design, stands as an average fantasy adventure without any of the magic of EXCALIBUR. It oddly borrows a few of the same cast members, namely Nicholas Clay and Gabriel Byrne playing very similar character. Byrne, no surprise, snarls his way through the film while our star Eric Stoltz isn't exactly the most engaging or charismatic, but does a fine job with his character of a cowardly knight who finds his true calling protecting children after fleeing the battlefield.

The overall themes track much more closely to the lower-budget EXCALIBUR knockoff that was HEART AND ARMOR in that it focuses heavily on the battles between Moors and Christians. There's even some vague history involving the real-life Children's Crusade and the rampant child slavery of the day thrown in for good measure, though don't expect this film to enlighten you too much as it never goes beyond the surface level. The battle scenes never get too bloody, though it's a violent enough of a film to not seem aimed squarely at young viewers. There are plenty of goofy scenes sprinkled in, like the little flags on a fortress roboticly raising and lowering depending on who's in charge.

I can see why this film failed to find the legacy audience of FLESH + BLOOD or LADYHAWKE (made around the same time) as it's not as gritty and realistic as the former nor romantic and anachronistic as the latter. However I had to say I enjoyed it far more than either of those. At least there's not any sexual assault or Matthew Broderick gumming up the works.