Wheres the chariots Neil Marshall.

Rating: 3/10 (17 August 2010)

I don't know about you guys but I LOVE a good hack and slash historical movie.
Movies like brave heart while being completely irrelevant to actual history still manage to portray a sense of realism and fact.
This movie on the other hand, while having excellent action scenes seems to have been derived from a ten minute read of the "Pict" page on Wikipedia.
The accents are terrible, we've got everything from new York to cockney English (before the birth of modern England of course!) Not to mention the language they speak is portrayed as Gaelic yet the Pictish chief speaks with a "Scots" accent, a completely different language and way of speaking, Scots is rough and bold while Gaelic is flowing and poetic.
Then comes the fight scenes and complete absence of interesting Roman tactics, when attacked and flanked on a long narrow path they simply form a 1 man thick shield wall and wait. In reality an internal column would of been marching inside this wall from the rear to double its thickness and concentrate their forces. Romans were known specifically for their mid battle maneuvering to see them all stand there like idiots was quite disappointing.
Not to mention the Roman soldiers in some scenes seem to think parrying an Axe with a short sword is a good idea, as opposed to deflecting or dodging it and counter attacking. This is like standing in front of a sledgehammer with a magic wand... No one in their right mind would do it and when you see that, you instantly lose the excitement.
Then theirs the Picts! who use kindergarten face paint instead of naturally derived dies, I mean COME ON how much would it of cost the director to use genuine natural textured dye like the Pict's used. The stuff they use looks like straight out of a Chinese factory!! I cant begin to explain how absent minded this director/producer must be to completely ignore the fact their "ancient warriors" were putting on $2 face paint, while the Roman soldiers were dressed to perfection (maybe not historically accurate but they looked real) this is just pathetic. He could of just added lumps of bloody flower and water and it would of looked real.... this is disgusting apathy.
Then of course there's the complete absence of chariot warfare, which the Pict's were known for. This was generally their only form of cavalry. It is also an extremely interesting thing to add to a fight scene, I don't remember seeing chariots since "ben hur".
They also fought naked, or completely devoid of Armour. However they are dressed like vikings for some reason. Yes vikings colonized eastern Great Britain Neil Marshal, they were however not Picts.
This director had a HUGE array of culture and history to draw from to create this movie, instead we have a naive's perspective, and the creation of the type of hack and slash that has been done before so many times. The dodgy one.
I'm not even going to comment on the acting, suffice to say its reasonable and its a real shame it was destroyed by the "cheapness" of everything else, you just cant appreciate acting when you haven't been drawn into the movie through its quality.