| TRISTAN & ISOLDE |
 2006 - UK / USADirector: Kevin Reynolds
- Reviewed by Vickie
Set in Ireland and England many centuries ago, the film centers on Franco’s Brit, Tristan—a warrior “with the heart of a lion”—and his forbidden relationship with Irish princess Isolde (Sophia Myles). See, Ireland and England are at war and a steamy romance between rival nationals is frowned upon. Things get more complicated when Isolde’s nasty-king father (David O’Hara sporting the world’s most fake-looking facial hair) schemes to divide and conquer the British armies by holding a round-robin he-man competition and offers his daughter as the prize for the winning team. Nice! Too bad this subsequently betroths Isolde to Tristan’s father-figure, Lord Marke (Rufus Sewell). Thus sets in motion the tragic tale of lovers unable to be together for one reason after another. Despite some lovely, Kate Winslet-y work by Myles, who struggles under the weight of a cumbersome script and a perpetually weepy character, the film has a number of problems. Franco leads the pack with his disappointing performance—try not to snicker whenever Tristan is “crying.” It’s difficult to root for his character when he’s so uninteresting and bland. The movie is also about 20 minutes too long. Had the filmmakers wanted to trim it a tad, all they would have needed to do was leave out half of the umpteen shots of characters sitting outside and staring into the distance. I swear this device was used at least a dozen times! We get it, people in ancient times evidently liked thinking deep thoughts and looking pensive. Move on. And if I see one more movie featuring some kind of Olde English party that involves the requisite dance sequence where characters pair up, link pinkies and prance about to tinkly music while whispering secrets, I think I might scream. Finally, I don’t know what it is about Rufus Sewell, but he always comes off as a villain no matter what kind of character he’s playing. Here, he’s meant to be kind of heroic and noble and nice, but I kept waiting for him to sneer and thrust a sword through somebody. He’s kind of spooky, and I think that undermines his character to some extent…which, in turn, detracts from the story…which, in turn, contributes to this film’s lackluster four slices. As an aside: Someone should have hired a copy editor for the film’s onscreen epilogue, which is a poorly constructed sentence that left me wondering whether it was a character or a tree that disappeared forever. |
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There’s a reason all of the trailers for this film are devoid of
dialogue—save for a word or two—delivered by lead actor James
Franco. His accent is so awful and barely there that it kind of sounds
like Kevin Dillon (that’s right, Kevin, not Matt) pretending to be
British. Badly. Were all the dialect coaches busy when they were
crewing up for this film?? Unfortunately, combined with his somewhat
wooden performance, Franco’s accent (or lack thereof) plays a
significant role in the sinking of this would-be-epic love story.
