Disappointment

Rating: Null/10 (20 October 2007)

The cast is wonderful, some of the scenes are well done, but alas, the movie takes significant liberties with history and leaves out some of the most dramatic pieces of the story.
I find it incomprehensible how anyone could make a movie dealing with Elizabeth and the defeat of the Armada and omit the core of her famous speech to the English army at Tilbury, namely the line "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a King, and of a King of England too!" Everyone familiar with the story is sitting waiting for Elizabeth to deliver that line, one of the greatest inspirational speeches in British history. It ought be the dramatic highlight of the movie. However, alas, it is not there. How can a screen writer not use such material?
Perhaps as bad is the role that the movie assigns Raleigh in the defeat of the Spanish Armada. During the entire fight up the Channel, Raleigh was never at sea. His responsibilities were on the land, defending the coast of Devonshire. Placing him on a fire ship targeted at the anchored Spanish fleet is the purist fiction.
Other lesser omissions and errors could also be cited. The result is to leave this viewer disappointed.