Disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (22 March 2014)

I was very disappointed in this film. Given the brilliant cast, I thought it would be well worth watching. How wrong I was! It's a shame as the film had so much potential - which is probably what the cast thought. What a total waste of acting talent!
The fault is most certainly due to the director who lacked vision. The film lacks any form of direction and does not seem to know what its target audience is. Is it a historic action film? A family film, perhaps? Neither as it happens. Just a mish-mash of genres trying to please everyone and pleasing no-one.
Despite a good story to build upon the film just seems a bit aimless and lack-lustre. The cast had not been given any proper direction and the screenplay itself also left little room for character development. The result of this is that there was no empathy for any of the characters who seem quite one dimensional.
However, it was the bad editing and camera-work which I found to be the the most off-putting. Clips were cut far too short with no lingering moments for emotion to be portrayed. Even the camera-work was sometimes shaky. Given the beautiful scenic backdrops the cinematography could have been amazing. Instead the cameraman chose to do middle-shots almost throughout. The whole thing just seemed a bit amateurish.
In my view what could have been a really good film with great potential was ruined by a total lack of direction and inability to use the cast to their full potential.