Mud and armour can't hide a lame screenplay

Rating: 3/10 (17 April 2020)

This movie thoroughly traduces history, but so it goes. Historical fiction is first and foremost fiction, with history as selective window-dressing. This film fails because the clunky, tone-deaf screenplay makes so little sense - with or without a little prior knowledge of the history - that no amount of mud-streaked plate-armour or moody candle-light could make it less grating.
The film ignores the fact that England and France had been at war since the mid-14th century, and that Henry V came to the throne as an experienced, enthusiastic and cunning warrior-king with a keen sense of entitlement to French real estate. Yet what really grates with this script is the grossly simplified picture of Henry we're given. The writers plainly boiled everything down to a simple idea: a pouting teenage wastrel has responsibility thrust upon him, eventually steps up to the mark when his innate nobility is stoked and is so guileless that he is dragged into war by scheming grown-ups.
I fear that the expensive pretence of historical accuracy blinded viewers and producers alike to the fact that the story is so crass and simplistic, and the characters so one-dimensional, that it wouldn't make the cut for an average soap opera.
On a positive note, I can now see why Timothée Chalamet was cast as Paul Atreides in Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Dune. He can bring grit and majesty.