The British historical action drama Boudica: Queen of War, starring Olga Kurylenko in the title role, has been released. The plot of the film is inspired by the legends of the freedom-loving queen of the Iceni tribe, Bowdika, who was not afraid to challenge the mighty Roman Empire. In the review below, we will analyze why this movie makes no sense to watch on the big screen and, in fact, should not be watched at all.
The first century AD. The Roman Empire had long ago begun its conquest of Great Britain. There, among the dense forests and emerald lawns, was a peaceful tribe of Iceni. Their ruler, Prasutag, tried his best to avoid bloodshed, so he paid tribute to the Romans and pretended to be happy to welcome the arrogant Roman procurator, Catus Decianus, to his land.
One day Prasutag falls victim to treason, and his wife, now known as Bowdika, nearly dies from torture by the same Decian. The latter establishes his power in this territory, and the barely surviving queen is rescued by resistance fighters who firmly believe that she is destined to play an important role in future events. And so it happens: Bowdika heals her wounds, picks up a sword, paints her cheeks with war paint, and leads an uprising against the Romans.
Olha Kurylenko, a native of the now-occupied Berdiansk, is starring in a historical drama about the Roman occupation of Britain. This is not her first experience in British historical cinema: in 2010, the actress appeared in Neil Marshall’s Centurion. If you recall, the film also dealt with the Roman invasion of Britain, though it was set in a later period, in the early second century.
The film also features a number of actors from the Vikings TV series: Clive Standen, Peter Franzen, and Lucy Martin.
The director Jesse Jones, known for his penny-pinching movie trifles (for example, last year’s White Elephant with Kurylenko and Bruce Willis), obviously has healthy ambitions. But at the same time, he has neither the Hollywood budgets nor the talent to make an adequate movie with modest resources.
It would be much more appropriate here to recall the unforgettable opuses of maestro Uwe Boll, who, albeit in the realm of conventional fantasy, also did not disdain to step into the territory of the sword and sandals genre, and to sprinkle gallons of artificial blood on the set. The result was an absurdist masquerade and tastelessness (albeit with a much larger budget), but Johnson is following the same dead-end path.
The play begins with the fabulously utopian life of the happy family of Praustag, Bowdick and their twin daughters. Everyone is happy and smiling, like in a milk commercial. But with the appearance of the unpleasant Mr. Prosecutor, the clouds thicken, the smiles disappear, and the whole idyll comes to an end.
However, the situation does not improve in the final act, when the long-suffering uprising finally unfolds. It is a completely monotonous bloody mess, devoid of even the slightest ingenuity or production design.
According to historical records, in particular, the ancient Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus wrote about those distant events, Bowdica had an army of many thousands. But the filmmakers of the movie, even in the final battle, have to be modestly content with a few dozen extras. That is, there are no general plans, spectacular camera spans, and, consequently, scale out of the question.
Boudica: Queen of War turned out to be a catastrophically meaningless, rather pointless, and completely uninteresting film that wants to appear to be an epic warrior movie. But no matter how much you smear yourself with Furiosa’s battle makeup or flaunt authentic props, it’s clearly not enough to be so.
