What A Mess

Rating: 2/10 (7 November 2019)

Let's get the simple stuff out of the way first:
1) The people who made this film have never cracked a history book in their lives. They don't know anything about the period the film is set in, or the real people and real events they were trying to portray. Apart from getting some people's names and a couple of locations right, they fail at literally everything. It would actually be hard to get this much wrong if you weren't deliberately trying to do so. With so much going on, statistically one would be likely to get more right simply by chance if the script were being handled by chimpanzees.
Shakespeare took his share of liberties with the story of Henry V, but then, his audience was literally Henry's descendants, so he had a particular motivation to portray things in a certain light. One cannot imagine what the writers of this mess had as motivation. The story they are telling is supposedly a blend of history and Shakespeare, but they utterly fail at being faithful to either the events or the spirit of both. I suppose I could have just left this portion of the review at "they utterly fail."
Agincourt, the battle on which the entire story revolves, was a brilliant and incredibly dramatic battle. A faithful depiction of the battle would have cost no more resources, been no more difficult to portray or for the audience to follow, and would have been vastly more visually impressive and dramatically impactful than the bout of silly fantasy we are instead treated to. If you watched that and thought, "This is what a medieval battle would really look like," your education is lacking and you should consider picking up one of Bernard Cornwell's excellent novels of the period as a primer.
2) I cannot for the life of me fathom why there are two 21st century characters shoehorned into the middle of this 15th century story. It's not just that Prince Hal/Henry V does not even remotely resemble the real person- it's that even if this were a made up character in a fantasy tale he would still appear six centuries out of place. He is entirely composed of silly 21st century notions about kingship, war, relationships, etc. And Catherine of Valois is even more ridiculous than he is. "All monarchy is illegitimate," says the future queen. If that wasn't a laugh line, I don't know why they included it.
3) I could go on, but this is getting long already, so I'll summarize. The pacing is awful, the dialogue is often painful. I'm not one of those who enjoys Shakespearean language (I'd rather have a faithful modern version of the wording), but at least Shakespeare's dialogue is intelligent, unlike this nonsense. Some of the performances would probably have been impressive if they hadn't been wading through such utter nonsense. And why is Falsaff here? He's a fictional character ripped from Shakespeare, but entirely divorced from the actual Shakespearean character. He simply makes no sense, despite Joel Edgerton's herculean efforts.
In short, fools may like this film, but it is bad history, abysmal Shakespeare, and poor film making. I highly recommend watching Henry V (1998) instead, for a much better telling of a similar story.