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Directed by:
Kenneth Branagh  
Written by:
Kenneth Branagh, from William Shakespeare's play
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| Released: |
1989 |
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| Genre: |
REMAKE
BIOPIC
COSTUME
DRAMA
WAR
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| Origin: |
GB |
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| Length: |
89 |
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ANTI Reviews
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| | | "He doesn't indicate why the French lost at Agincourt... doesn't show that the French and their horses were fatally encumbered by their armor and chain mail and other trappings; when the arrows hit... the riders fell into the water and mud, and were too weighed down to get up. They were massacred while they struggled like beetles on their backs. As Branagh stages the battle, with the two sides engaged in hand-to-hand combat, there's no way to understand why the English rather than the French won (except that God is with them)." | | (Pauline Kael) | | | "Branagh's camera concentrates so intensely on Branagh that the drama, as such, suffers. Henry's Big Speeches, after all, are intended not just as histrionics but as calls to action; yet when Branagh cuts to the faces of his listeners at Harfleur or Agincourt, the tattered extras don't seem to have been told how to react: the expressions on their faces seem to be saying, variously, "What an actor!" "What a time to make a speech!" and "Gee, why's he speaking in iambic pentameter?" Yes, when the speeches are over the soldiers behave as if somebody's lit a fire under them, and proceed to fight heroically; but one misses a sense of vital connection between them and their king. Branagh appears, in short, to see Shakespeare less as drama than as an occasion for dazzling solo turns." | | (Bruce Bawer, American Spectator) | | | "The film's visual tedium, vulgarity and musical mediocrity would be more bearable if Branagh himself were a more persuasive lead actor." | | (MFB) | | | | | |
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, Simon Shepherd
