I can't even

Rating: 4/10 (6 November 2019)

The movie is haunted by Timothee Chalamet's cold, lifeless eyes. Perhaps he screened "The Chimes at Midnight" and realized there was really no point in trying to improve on Orson Welles's version of Sir John Falstaff, and his will left him. Or perhaps he watched Laurence Olivier's brilliant 1944 adaptation of "Henry V" and was too stunned to move afterwards, and could only shuffle onto the set as if in a trance. Or he might have had a look at Kenneth Branagh's 1989 version of the same play. His wholly affectless face and dull, tired gaze tell a story of a man robbed of all energy, a broken, humbled actor who understands the impossibility of the task before him; the giants of cinema loom large, and though he tries to stand on their shoulders, their combined weight ends up crushing him.
The rest of the cast and crew caught the same fever. The movie is empty, listless; it drags along, as the actors mumble into their beards and slouch around the gloomy medieval locations and tedious battle scenes.
Only Robert Pattinson seems to have survived intact. He puts on an outrageous French accent as the Dauphin, taunting those silly English kniggits who have invaded his dreary country. Too bad he didn't stick around longer, but it was probably a wise move on Pattinson's part. Lily-Rose Depp as Princess Catherine shows up about twenty minutes to the end to liven things up, but she also beats a hasty retreat in the face of Chalamet's sulky countenance.
Everyone else seems determined to fade into the background, as if they were too embarrassed to be noticed. Joel Edgerton gets away with the bare minimum of effort as Falstaff, a Shakespearean invention elevated here to historical standing, and killed off in place of the real Duke of York. Welles left big shoes to fill, and an even bigger suit of armor, and Edgerton makes no effort to fill them. It's easy to forget he's there.
It's encouraging to know that you can write and direct a historical movie without ever bothering to open a history book. History is very complicated anyway: the facts, like the films of Welles, Olivier, and Branagh, are best left where they belong, in the past, where they won't get in anyone's way.