In Sword of Vengeance, a lone warrior (credited as the “Shadow Walker,” and played by Stanley Weber) is out to get revenge in the years following the Battle of Hastings in England. The opening text explains that after the victory of William the Conqueror at said battle, he sent out his men to wreak havoc on the Saxons of England. One man in particular, the Earl Durant (Karel Roden), has slaughtered a hundred thousand Saxons, and subjugates those that remain. The warrior falls in with a small group of Saxons, and comes to lead them in their struggle against Durant and his equally vicious sons.
The film holds off on revealing for what the warrior is seeking vengeance. For the most part, actually, the movie keeps us from knowing anything about the lead character, other than the fact that he is very good at killing people. The film mostly views plot as an obligation, something to stick between scenes of bloody medieval fighting. And one can appreciate this straightforward way of thinking, but the movie does not emerge the better for it.
Keeping the plot simple is one thing. Keeping it from having any personality is another. The film sadly takes the latter path, its few scenes of dialogue mostly made up of expository nonsense explaining a situation that was already covered in the opening crawl. The film also chooses to slowly reveal the backstory of the main character through a succession of flashbacks. But there is little gained from going into the past, the film making the mistake of elaborating on what is already plainly obvious. It might have even more interesting and more thematically relevant if they didn’t provide any reasons for the hero’s quest for vengeance at all.
But the film is set on making everything feel generic. Though this doesn’t seem like the movie for it, the script finds time to give the hero a romantic dalliance. It feels like a waste of time, and it feels like it was included in there just because movies tend to have romantic subplots. The film’s grim, medieval look provides some visual interest at first, but the lack of variety in shots soon negates that effect. Almost everything is shot at medium close range, and little effort has been put into leading the eye in and out of frame.
The film comes to life during the battle scenes, with stylish violence being the main attraction. But even here, a lack of variety cuts into the enjoyment. Slow-motion effects are overused, the scenes struggling to find a sense of rhythm as the action slows to a crawl. As the Shadow Walker, Stanley Weber is appropriately grim. He does exude the right kind of manly toughness to sell the character’s one-note nature. The supporting cast is not great, but they do the job well enough for this kind of movie.
Sword of Vengeance sets out to be simple, but it isn’t nearly simple enough. It doesn’t trust its audience enough to follow one of the basic story setups. Once it establishes the time period and the historical context, there isn’t really much more we needed to know. There’s just some guy who has it out for the Earl who’s killed a lot of people. But the film keeps itself from moving, spending time on a lot of nonsense that no one really cares about. Its action, though flawed, is its best asset. It should have focused on that.
My Rating:
