Fencing! Fighting! Treachery! True Love!

Rating: Null/10 (24 September 2002)

One of the best films ever made, there's something here for everyone.
Bill Goldman's book has always been a favorite of mine, but I didn't think it was filmable without major surgery. Who better to perform the needed cuts than Goldman himself?
Firstly, the framing story is wonderful. Peter Falk as the elderly grandfather to Fred Savage gives one of his finest performances, and Fred plays perfectly off him.
The real story is impossible to describe. There aren't enough superlatives. There's not a single wrong move made by any of the actors. Andre "The Giant" Roussimoff is a great big teddybear, Cary Elwes is the perfect pirate prince, and Mandy Patinkin is flawless as the vengeance- driven Inigo. Chris Sarandon is appropriately sleazy as Humperdinck, and Wallace Shawn is a hoot as Vizzini, the nasty little Sicilian.
The two standouts are Nicholas Guest, whose character of Count Tyrone Rugen is a precise blend of two of the greatest movie villains of all time: Henry Daniel and Conrad Veidt. He's oily, sneaky and evil, and manages it without twirling his mustache and cackling nastily.
And Robin Wright, in her first film role, is luminous. I fell in love with her the instant I saw her.
As to the story itself, if there are echoes of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" here, it's because of the writer, who loved those characters so much that they couldn't help but leak into the story.
All told, this is one of my favorite films, and I can't recommend it highly enough. See this one over and over again. Make your kids watch it. Don't tell them it's a kissing story, though...