What makes a B movie? Historically they filled the second half of the bill, were shorter, cheaper and generally inferior to A movies. Today the defining characteristic of a B movie, is budget. Those things which lend prestige to a film simply can't be afforded.
From scripts to costuming, todays B movies are all about improvising and simply making do. Day of Wrath is clearly a B movie but it did seem to have had a reasonable budget to work with. Costuming is impressive. Sets are credible. The script is OK. However when we get to aspects like the plot, well, things start to fall apart.
The plot is clumsy and disjointed. A hotchpotch of Catholic, Jewish, Spanish aristocratic interests mixed in with secret compartments, hidden identities, secret lists and buried family 'shame'. There is not much from the swashbuckler genre that hasn't been throw in to the pot.
There are other flaws. We are well over the half way mark when we discover the inn keeper is Lambert's oldest and dearest friend. He then promptly disappears from the narrative altogether! Phylida Law makes a much better fist of being Lambeth's mother than he does her son. (And this despite Law having but one costume for nearly the entire movie!) Brian Blessed has played one too many riotous and ribald monarchs and has fallen into shallow caricature. And on it goes.
Adrian Rudomin is a journeyman director and a writer unafraid of cliches or tired tropes. His depiction of the Catholic Church is particularly disappointing. All that James Faulkner, as Friar Anselmo, needed to complete his character was a black moustache to twirl and a floor length cap to swirl. He has played similar roles in the past but to much greater effect.
Rudomin sets several scenes in a scriptorium (transcribing room), the medieval workshops which saw rows of anonymous monks copy and decorate texts that were culturally invaluable but does nothing with such a rich setting, nothing at all. The events in the scriptorium could taken place anywhere!
Still, and despite being able to do much more than he did, Rudomin has drawn a tolerable and moderately entertaining movie together.
A final and sad observation concerns Christopher Lambert himself. He was 49 when he made this film and seems tired. He is leagues away as an actor from his 1984 Tarzan or even his 1986 Highlander franchise. This tiredness, along with Rudomin's limitations, confirms the movies' B grade.
