No need to see this film, really. Worst thing in the film is the cut, it's done really bad. I'm not sure if I've ever seen a worse cut. It's horribly fast with horrible rhythm. It's the director's second work and if the first one was as bad as this one, I wonder who let him do it. Well, maybe the ten-year gap between the movies tells something.
The most blame probably goes to the script. The characters and scenes are left inexplicably shallow. The director has failed in creating any mood in the film. Most actors seem to overact most of the time, or maybe its just the bad cut than makes it feel that way. The events have gaping unrealistic holes. It's hard to get an idea of the settings of the movie, how big the city is, and so on; I got a picture that the population of the city consisted almost solely of aristocrats and guards. The movie is also littered with anachronisms, such as mentioning separation of church and state and the overacted tenderness towards children, not to mention the stereotypical view of the time period. And why use actors of mainly North-European descent, when the setting is in Spain? I believe Hollywood has a large population of actors of Spanish descent, so why not use them? Same applies to the Jewish characters. Of the major actors, I think only Carmen Marsillach was Spanish, probably none were Jewish.
Occasionally, especially towards the end, I could see a tiny hint of an actually good movie. The basic plot is actually not that bad, if you think about it separately from the movie and imagine what kind of movie a decent writer and director could have done out of it. The historical setting is real. I would almost think that this is a bad script based on a decent book. Apparently the director also wrote it himself though.
The most blame probably goes to the script. The characters and scenes are left inexplicably shallow. The director has failed in creating any mood in the film. Most actors seem to overact most of the time, or maybe its just the bad cut than makes it feel that way. The events have gaping unrealistic holes. It's hard to get an idea of the settings of the movie, how big the city is, and so on; I got a picture that the population of the city consisted almost solely of aristocrats and guards. The movie is also littered with anachronisms, such as mentioning separation of church and state and the overacted tenderness towards children, not to mention the stereotypical view of the time period. And why use actors of mainly North-European descent, when the setting is in Spain? I believe Hollywood has a large population of actors of Spanish descent, so why not use them? Same applies to the Jewish characters. Of the major actors, I think only Carmen Marsillach was Spanish, probably none were Jewish.
Occasionally, especially towards the end, I could see a tiny hint of an actually good movie. The basic plot is actually not that bad, if you think about it separately from the movie and imagine what kind of movie a decent writer and director could have done out of it. The historical setting is real. I would almost think that this is a bad script based on a decent book. Apparently the director also wrote it himself though.