Sword of Vengeance (2015) is one of those films that walks a fine line between style and substance, a piano wire thin line that can’t help but excises substance.
Set in the wake of the brutal oppressions that followed the victory of William the Bastard at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, a lone fighter arrives in the rain soaked mud of the north, and picks a fight with the local lord. He kills his men and saves the inhabitants of the local Saxon hovel. And, when the enemy of your enemy is your friend, the outsider joins the locals to fight.
The film does have some interesting ideas. The misty washed-out colour palate and epic vistas add an otherworldly poetry to the overused slow-motion. The fight scenes have a certain two-sword brutality to them, blood exiting bodies like ejaculate yanked from a fifteen-year-old boy. But the weight of all this visual style makes for an unsteady journey.
Inevitably it falls off that wire, slicing away the fat and muscle and bone of the story. What’s left is a gaping wound where the story should’ve been.
Darrin // Nightingale 