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Absolutely the worst movie.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Cromwell is a typical 70's grand costume movie with a huge task at hand, and a very flawed, if not blatantly dubious result achieved in the end. Richard Harris may seem a great actor, but he surely overperformed and overdid at almost every angle of his portrayal of Oliver Cromwell - he rants, he screams, he sweats and he screams a lot, but finally exaggerates a whole thing to the point of hilarious parody. Alec Guinness made a very decent job as KIng Charles I but he sometimes seems a bit hazy, detached and rather cold, so a bigger depth is expected from such a complicated figure, instead we see a very one-sided character here. Not much must be said about young Timothy Dalton who played Prince Rupert, and man, did he overplay! He did a fibe first-class parody of laughable level. and little merit. This movie tried to pack many events into a 120-minute span and surely failed - what we see is a rush through some battles, with a very low quality battle scenes in fact, we see a very galloping tour via very serious things, totally omitting several important events altogether. What we have as a finished product is a very shallow and rather weak broth instead of a very thick and strong liquor it was supposed to become

CROMWELL is one of those big budget historical epics that were all the rage in the 1960s and early 1970s. It's similar in scope to WATERLOO but not quite as lavish, although it does try very hard. The English Civil War has rarely been attempted on screen so it's rather commendable that they attempted to depict it here. Overall I liked the film, although it didn't amaze me.One of the film's problems is with the hulking cast list featuring a ton of notable faces in notable roles. Of the characters, only Charles I and Oliver Cromwell have any kind of depth, with both Guinness and Harris excelling, particularly the latter who gets to grips with his character's depth and loyalties. The rest are fun to see but act as window dressing, although with the gorgeous scenery and costumes it's very nice window dressing. The big battle scenes are the best part of this production, which is occasionally overlong and drags at the climax, but otherwise hits the mark.

It's a bit awkward to see Irishman Richard Harris spitting venom and turning against his king at the idea England hiring on Irish mercenaries and bowing to a Catholic Queen, but he puts in a very fun performance in this little-represented section of history. The film plays its cards too soon with the pacing though, bringing us the most exciting action, scenery, battle scenes and dramatic panache early on and then ending on more of a somber courtroom whimper. Nicely, the film stays apolitical and presents both sides with some sympathy. Alec Guiness really shines as King Charles I, managing to play the role as bumbling and arrogant yet sympathetic as extremely courageous to the end and as an unfortunate product of his time. It's really interesting to see Michael Jayston playing one of the more vehement revolutionaries in this film, especially considering the next year he'd get his big starring role as the very pro-establishment titular character NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA, a very similar film about the end of a European Monarchy.CROMWELL is unfairly forgotten these days, especially considering it is quite lavish, somewhat realistic in terms of production design and battle tactics, and features excellent performances by a whole host of familiar British performers like Timothy Dalton, Jack Gwillim, Douglas Wilmer, Charles Gray, Frank Finlay, and a lot of other actors I recognized from "Doctor Who". B-movie stalwart Ian McCulloch is credited though I failed to identify him, maybe as he was so young at the time and, like everyone else in the film, difficult to recognize under wigs and heavy makeup.

This film is well-done and the battles, military or political, are clear enough in spite of the numerous ellipses due to the extremely dense and long period covered by the film from 1640 to 1650 or so. Yet it does not really explain who Cromwell was and if he had real objectives of his own beyond his religious rhetoric. It also clearly explains why this period could not go beyond that transitory and imperfect compromise of the least bad in a difficult period leaving the better and the best for later.The film depicts a king who was absolutely tied up in his feudal belief that he had been appointed by God and had no accounts to give to any one. This dominant feudal position was also the dominant legal position: there was no law and no jurisprudence that enabled a king to be dismissed by any authority other than death and God. On that question Cromwell represented a new point of view that had never existed anywhere else in the Christian world at the time. What does human society have to do in such a situation? Move on and let history do what it wants. So they moved on and had the king beheaded after a three days' hearing that could hardly qualify as a trial.Could there have been a compromise moving towards any parliamentary democracy? No, for three main reasons. First the king was stubborn and probably not very swift, at least not able to understand that God is a very good fellow but that on earth we work with compromises and not absolute authority. Second parliament, or what was left of this long parliament, was not elected by the people as is repeated galore of times in the film, but only by a few tens of thousands of people: the propertied and business owning tax paying people and these people, landowners first, could have in their chattel some human serfs or indentured servants who were nothing but a property of some type. These of course, the vast majority of the people had no right to vote. Third Cromwell never accepted to move towards a wider and more open definition of democracy like the Levelers were asking and he even had one of their leaders hanged. In other words the two civil wars led to a draw and nothing else and the only way out was to disband parliament and to rule alone.But the film – that is maybe too old for that – could have questioned history a little bit more and insisted on the essential and contradictory elements of the period. First it is Parliament that introduced for the first and only time in England a body of state censors to implement official censorship of anything published before publication. The discourse about religious freedom was in fact a very one-sided approach of that freedom: freedom provided the Catholics be chased and hunted, the Anglican church and all chapels have no bishops and archbishops, (which was nearly impossible to implement with the Anglican church, and yet they tried). It would have been interesting to show that tremendously sectarianism if not fundamentalism on the side of the moderate puritans like Cromwell as well as on the side of the most committed people beyond this revolution.But the film is absolutely silent on the main subject: the economy. The great expansion to the Americas (northern essentially) but also to the Indian Ocean and to Africa, started under Elizabeth, went on under James I and Charles I, but also went on and even accelerated under Cromwell. But this great expansion was not paid by the Crown for the simple reason the Crown had no fleet whatsoever. The fleet was a merchant fleet in the hands of the mercantile societies and companies that started being set up, and the sailors were those of these companies ,including the militarized ones necessary for the security of that commerce. The Royal fleet was still to come and will be for some time still. If they had thought of that they would have understood the importance of this period in England: it liberated the energy of these merchants because many controls and obligations set under the kings were dropped or eased out.That would also explain why Cromwell had to summon Parliament when he wanted to fight his naval war against Spain (essential for the development of maritime commerce), he had to go to Parliament to ask the Members of Parliament who directly represented or were the merchants in question to accept to lend their ships and their sailors to organize some fleet. That's what happened under Cromwell again.That would also explain what we can think of the readiness of history to accept change. England was not ready for a true parliamentary system of the people for the people by the people. Free and general elections were not even thought of possible. The Industrial Revolution was not even in the making yet. And habeas corpus and other fundamental human rights were not yet even imagined. That will need the Restoration which will be a failure with the second king, James II, and the Glorious Revolution that will oust him. Cromwell at least had the great merit of not trying to force history, or at least not too much, and what he did more or less survived his time after the restoration. The beheading of the king was useless, probably a mistake as Tony Benn thought, but he refused to become a King in his place. He stopped short of the irreversible mistake that would have brought him down in less than a year probably. In other words he was on that point as prudent as Napoleon who did not take the title of King after the French Revolution.So I am slightly disappointed by this film because it is at best a prudent presentation.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU