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Sorry, this movie sucks

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

it reminds many other historical films. for recipes, solutions, mixture of bloody scenes, political secrets and the recreate of a reasonable sketch for a dark period. good performances, beautiful costumes, the hero and a good looking lead actor who, far to be the best choice for the role of Henri IV, it is a reasonable one. short, a seductive film, history "ad usum delphini", good start point for discover the roots of events. and, sure, a nice story, heroic, tragic, interesting. it is one of films with a noble purpose and a smart director who knows translate, on the taste of public, Modern history in the right images. and this is the most important virtue in this case.

Ambitious in its intentions, based on Heinrich Mann's historical novel, this movie looks apparently pretty good: it surely has a much more authentic atmosphere especially compared to the infamous 'La Reine Margot', good cinematography, and decent acting (except Charles IX). But, contrary to another reviewer who thought it too long, actually it's too short and over-simplified.The dire, murderous and suspicious atmosphere is very well realized, as many of those admired crowned heads have behaved sometimes like insane mass murderers, and luckily the glamorized feel of too many historical films has not crept in here. But the script looks rushed, hurrying and compressing events, decades, characters and their motivations. Thus, even the action is unclear for a viewer unfamiliar with that age and place, and important historical or dramatic events are but hinted at or simply omitted (the Ligue and its rebellion, the deaths of Charles IX, Henri III and of his brother, the last Valois heir, and also Caterina's death).In reality, the historical characters have been pretty complex and contradictory: Caterina was not only an evil and scheming hag such as her portrayal in Dumas' novels, but an active and courageous politician striving (mostly in vain) to maintain a fragile balance in a kingdom devastated by three rival factions (the Court, the Guise family with its Ligue, and the Huguenots led by the future Henri IV). Or Henri III, her favorite son, was indeed a weird, undecided, bisexual, perhaps bipolar fellow, but certainly not an idiot: it was him who 'eliminated' his main rival the duke de Guise and finally allied with the future Henri IV against the Ligue and named him heir presumptive. The death of Gabrielle is not elucidated in the film (was it Rosny, the king's main adviser, really? Unbelievable).Maria de Medici is treated in an infantile manner, and even the king's assassination is very poorly explained. Also lacking are many other tentatives of assassinating him throughout all his life course. The pacification of France after his last conversion and crowning took in reality many years and required much effort, from battles to bribery for rebellious dukes. By the way, the duke d'Epernon, the last standing rebel and a main mastermind of the king's assassination, is absent from this film.To sum all these up: despite its ambitious luster, strangely the film has the feel of a low budget one: too few characters, rushed situations, poorly explored motivations, quite few extras in the scenes at the Court. Which is in fact bad for a film treating such dramatic and surprising events.

it is far to be a revelation. stylized story, not extraordinary acting, battle and love scenes and the noble purpose to present in decent manner one of fundamental personalities of Modern French history. common biographic movie, without great ambition but remarkable for few scenes who reflects the roots of political crisis, it is a French past page in clothes of German. and without be impressive, the result is far to be boring or slice of time waist, sure, it could be better. but the performance of Julien Boisselier , charming and not complicated, transforming the lead character in a form of sketch, is a good thing and inspired spice for an easy film.

A German made film (originally released as a miniseries) about the life of the 16th century's Henri (or Henry) IV of France, one of the crucial kings in the French Wars of religion (by one count, Henry changed religions four times during his life between Catholicism and Protestantism). Solid and interesting, just a bit overlong at two hours and a half, it has both French actors and Germans actors dubbed in French (I didn't care much about this, though perhaps some French native speakers would). Medieval and early Modern history can be very complicated (the personal gets involved with the political, as the main political leaders tend to be relatives as well) but if you pay attention the various political plots are reasonably well explained in the film. On the minus side, the movie could have benefited from a more charismatic lead than Julien Boisselier as Henry. And Ulrich Noethen (who played Himmler in Downfall) outrageously overacts as Charles IX, one of Henry's predecessors. But the beautiful Chloe Stefani is lovely as Henry's mistress, Gabrielle d'Estrées (none more so when she appears nude, as she does frequently here). And Hannelore Hoger is suitably evil as queen Catharina de Medicis, a major plotter against Henry.The production values are reasonably good, though as in many other historical films, battles are not very credible when it seems to involve the fight of dozens of people, instead of thousands (films like these should consider using computer generated imagery to give modern audiences the feel of a large battle).The same subject matter was covered in La Reine Margot, a French film released in the 1990s, starring Isabelle Adjani as Marguerite de Valois (in Henri, Margot is played as a semi hysterical woman by Armelle Deutsch). I saw La Reine Margot at the time it was released, but I really don't remember a lot about it, except that it was a much stylized affair; Henri is a much more down to earth film.