Director: Kazuaki Kiriya
Running Time: 115 mins
Certificate: 15
Release Date: June 29th 2015 (UK)
I won’t waste your time too much with this review, as I can sum up my thoughts in two word – don’t bother. This is a Czech and South Korean co-production, loosely based on an old Japanese movie, and with a multi-national cast all speaking English in various random accents – it is therefore perhaps not surprising that it is a bit confused as to what the hell it’s all about.
Set somewhere that’s sort of a fusion of Medieval Europe and Asia, but also with fantasy undertones (it should come as no surprise that Last Knights feels a little like a misguided Game Of Throne fan film), Clive Owen is a knight who finds himself cast into the wilderness after the fall of his master (Morgan Freeman), and must band together with a group of other knights – 47 Ronin style – to regain their honour.
This is the sort of film where at first I kept rewinding it because I kept feeling that I’d missed something important. However, then I looked at the expression on the actors’ faces and realised that they had no clue what was go on either. If you are looking for what depth the actors bring to their characters, almost to a person behind their eyes you can see them saying, ‘At least I’m getting paid for this’.
The set-up for the plot takes way too long, the logic of the world is inconsistent, and the cod-Shakespearean dialogue varies between stupid and confusing. The action and sword-play could have been extremely cool, but it constantly feels like the camera operator was given a series of complex moves to make, but always gets there half a second too late and so you miss what you’re supposed to be seeing.
As you can probably tell by now, I was not a fan. In fact I’m struggling to find anything nice to say about it. Umm, well, I suppose some of the locations were nice – although it’s pretty bad when empty shots of the medieval Czech buildings and sets would have been more entertaining than what they put in them.
Overall Verdict: Like I said at the start of this review – don’t bother.
Reviewer: Tim Isaac
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