Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Kodie Bird True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

hwg1957-102-265704 Federico Barbarossa wants to extend his empire and invades northern Italy before a decisive battle stops his advance. His main antagonist is Alberto da Giussano from Milan who having seen his city razed to the ground eventually gets several city states to combine, forming the fighting force called the Company of Death. There is also Alberto da Giussano's love story with a woman called Eleonora who has flash forwards and premonitions and Siniscalco Barozzi who is lusting after Eleonora's sister Tessa. Sounds like a heady brew but most of it is routine and unexciting. Rutger Hauer, F. Murray Abraham and Cécile Cassel are good but the rest of the cast are uninteresting. It was difficult to tell some actors apart as they were hiding behind beards. The battle scenes had too much CGI and some scenes seemed truncated or confusing. How Eleanora ended up on the battlefield in uniform beats me.Films about a people fighting for their freedom can be inspiring but in this case I was rooting for the conqueror.

tvanderweyden This is my first review. Why? Because normally I don't say much about movies, just discuss them with friends. But this movie was so painful to watch, I just have to warn people!I love history and watch a lot of movies that cover a lot of different era's of the worlds (war) history. If you love history as much as I do, don't watch this movie, as it is really, really bad (couldn't believe this movies rating is above 4! too high for this movie).The only decent actor is Rutger Hauer and I have no idea why he agreed to do this movie (must have been a promise to a friend or a lot of money). All other actors, especially the "protagonist", are really painful to watch.Besides that, apart from being based on a historical event, it is very inaccurate (some people stated this before). That doesn't have to be bad as long as the entertaining value is there (look at Braveheart & Kingdom of Heaven for examples; those movies are highly inaccurate, but very entertaining).This movie is also the perfect example that "love stories" are more a burden on a movie than added value. It was not convincing at all and sounded too forced. If this is what Italy has to offer, then please, stop making movies!

junk-monkey Stultifyingly long 2 hour epic abut the formation of the Lombard League stuffed full of fascist symbolism and Rutger Hauer. Actually it was really stuffed full of horses.The script was a real clunker full of people telling each other historically important things the audience need to know but which they would have been fully aware - "Yes, these new taxes that the newly installed Pope Bendict the whateverth are really hurting the people..." Blah blah blah. Real local radio advertising dialogue. "Yes, June with the Lombardy League you get not one but two chances of fighting for...." Blah blah blah.Mixed in with this guff there was a subplot about a woman who had visions, was due to be burned as a witch - but wasn't by order of the Empress (who burned someone else instead) and ended up, for some totally unexplained reason, in armour on the battlefield (though whose side she was on is anyone's guess).The only thing that kept me watching, apart from the insane hotness of the witchy woman (Kasia Smutniak), was giggling with glee at every new interior. For some reason (maybe he had shares in a candle company) every interior was full of candles. Inside a peasant's hut late at night as the occupants try to go to sleep there were at least a dozen candles alight in the room. A dungeon cell had another dozen, and when the hero and heroine fall into bed at last, in a ramshackle hut - in daylight! - with sunlight streaming in through every crack and crevice - candles.It rained on the funeral too. But only only round the grave itself. The people standing in the back were in brilliant sunshine and dry as bones. Between the candle scenes we had the horse scenes. Horses filled up a lot of screen time in this movie. Sometimes they went this way, sometimes they went that way, sometimes they were in slow motion. I would guess a quarter of this film's running time was spent on shots of people riding across the screen. Gallumph gallumph gallumph. People appeared and disappeared from the narrative - and then reappeared when you'd forgotten who they were. (not that you could tell because everyone wore generic medieval brown and had generic medieval dirty hair and beards).The whole thing looks like it was shot as a miniseries and they cut it down to a movie. Only they cut out the wrong bits.Another quid wasted in Poundland and another one off my 'Watch Rutger Hauer's Entire Career' list.

Dr Sky Tower There was a lot of the same horse sound effects being used for every single horse scene (of which there are many). The end battle scene was OK. It just took 120 minutes to get there. So whilst waiting for the big money scene, you are forced to sit through a boring, impossible romance, some boring politics, some peasants trying to take on the bad guys, and one peasant fellow who was probably the most useless character in the entire movie.Not one of the characters was engaging. The movie spends a lot of time with a feral witch female character who looks like she was born in the jungle. She spends a lot of time crawling around on all fours like a rabid mutt, sniffing the ground and her boyfriend, and peering at the camera through dirty oily curtains of hair. She also spends the majority of time wearing a potato sack for clothes. What exactly did the BF see in this dirty little rat creature again? Oh, and she had magical powers.After the prerequisite love scene (interspersed with the death of her sister, how utterly original) you'd think things would start moving. Nope, it takes another hour. The end is an impossible-to-read narration of events that happens, but at least our hero lives happily ever after with his feral wife and they have lots of children together.This looked like it was made for TV. The production values were strangely cheap looking and the same locations were used to portray totally different places. How utterly boring.1/10