★★★
“Fury woad.”
The latest take on one of Britain’s greatest historical heroines has come in for a fair bit of critical flak. But I really did not think it was all that bad. Sure, it plays fast and loose with historical accuracy (Christianity wasn’t a thing in Britain at the time). However, we’re dealing with someone about whom there is very little reliable record. Why not throw in chunks of the Arthurian mythos, if it might make for a more interesting end product? The usual basics are there. Queen of the Iceni Boudica (Kurylenko) loses her husband (Standen), and subsequently falls foul of the occupying Roman Empire. She raises an army, leads a rebellion, kicks Roman butt for a while, but eventually goes down, fighting. That’s the Cliff Notes version.
The variations are in the details, and the versions previously reviewed each take a different approach. For example, Warrior Queen (2003) leaned into the drama. This goes the other way, coming to life most in the battle sequences. It should be no surprise: Johnson is a former stuntman, who has turned to directing action films. He’s best known for excellent Scott Adkins vehicle Avengement, but here we previously reviewed his war film, Hell Hath No Fury. There isn’t the budget here for the necessary scale – the Iceni army reportedly numbered well into six figures, but when Boudica is giving her inspirational speech, it’s more like a soccer mom offering half-time motivation. Yet it makes up for this in gory intensity: this is certainly the most blood-drenched version of the story ever told.
It does take its time getting there. Initially, Boudica is not a warrior queen at all. It’s only after she gets a sword handed down from previous generations that she begins to head in that direction. She encounters a female fighter (Martin), who regards Boudica as the fulfillment of prophecy. It’s when the Roman’s take over, flogging and branding her, then doing worse to her daughters (an angle which is handled weirdly, yet not ineffectively), that Kurylenko becomes the bad-ass Brit bitch we expected from the likes of Sentinelle. She paints up her face and takes the battle to the enemy, in a way which is up-close and personal.
At least for the first few battles, the Romans won’t know what hit them, and this absolutely doesn’t soft-pedal the brutality of hand-to-hand combat. It’s a shame there’s some stuff around the periphery that doesn’t work so well, such as a mercenary called Wulfgar (Franzén), who speaks modern-sounding French – was that even a thing in 61 AD? – and appears to have the hots for Boudica. There’s also the way her sword seems almost magical, which does perhaps take away from her intrinsically heroic nature, and doesn’t add much. I think if you took the best elements of both this and Warrior Queen, you might have something close to definitive. This can provide Kurylenko and a solid eye on the action. That’s still good enough for me.
Dir: Jesse V. Johnson
Star: Olga Kurylenko, Clive Standen, Peter Franzén, Lucy Martin