A Thriller worthy of its subject matter

Rating: Null/10 (24 June 2013)

Elizabeth surprised me, to be quite honest, because I never thought that a period piece would be made into a frightening thriller, but that it was. Elizabeth's first act of the film, opens with a darkness you would expect to see in a Silence of the Lambs type of film. It's shot with beautifully somber cinematography, a terrifying religious-themed film score, colossal costumes, and using palatial sets, Elizabeth could mistake you for a Shakespeare adaptation of Macbeth or Hamlet.
Cate Blanchett is really great in the role, as she's hyped up to be, supplying the film with Elizabeth's raw-emotion and cold persona. Geoffrey Rush is outstanding as the dark character, Walsingham, and Joseph Fiennes makes another memorable character of this era in the same year as the release of Shakespeare in Love. The film, though it delivers an excellent first act and a nice concluding third, the middle section of the lags behind because Elizabeth steps out of the thriller-type genre it was going for in the first 40 minutes and topics the expected marriage controversy with Elizabeth.
Sometimes film gets lost in its own reputation, but it still towers as period piece. Rating: 8/10; Grade: A-