Medieval (Hulu)

0:01 Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your Hostdan Bettimore. I'm a producer, writer of film and television and now a podcast producer. And despite having every streaming service, I never know what to watch. So anytime I watch something good, I talk about it on this show. This way, you'll never have the same problem I do. I watched this tonight. There's always something good to watch. Let's get started today on the show, I'm doing a Hulu roulette. Hulu is kind of actually a pretty good selection of movies. A lot of movies where what I found is a lot of movies where it's like I kind of wanted to do this movie. I didn't want to rent it. I'll watch it once it shows up on Hulu. That's happened to me a bunch of times recently. So there was a movie in particular, it's called Medieval. The reason I wanted to watch this movie it's because it stars Ben Foster, is one of my favorite actors. It also has Michael Kine, Matthew good, Till Schweiger. It's got a really good cast. It is the most expensive movie in the history of Czechoslovakia. I believe it's about a military hero from their history. So on these Roulette episodes, you know, I'm not necessarily say you should watch it. It's more like I've taken the Roulette spin for you, and let's find out if it was worth it, and then you can decide if you want to watch it.

1:34 I have to admit the first minute of fifty one seconds there's a bit of a red flag immediately, which is Michael Caine has this voiceover and it ends with him saying something to the effect of much of Europe sank into chaos, and then it just says on the screen only that part much of Europe's sake in the cast, which is a little bit awkward. Do you would think that it would either be all the voiceover you see it on the screen or none of it. It's like one sentence that was a little weird, and as it kind of keeps going, you're like, oh, maybe the reason they did this is because people were extremely confused about the beginning of the movie, because it's like, you know, you're turning on this movie and you kind of feel like you're in like a history lecture. You're you're like, what's a hold on? Who I mean? You know, I watched the whole movie. I couldn't necessarily tell you the historical context of it in a super accurate way. I do know where in Italy. I do know it's fourteen or two a d. And I know we're with Ben Foster Michael Caine. And it actually has a really great opening fight sequence. I'm just gonna tell you some stuff that happens in this fight sequence, and the precedent that this sets in terms of the quality of the action filmmaking does hold for the rest of the movie. So they're fighting like next to a lake.

2:49 It's like a little almost like a dirt road next to a lake, and they're pushing horses off in in this lake. We see a guy doing like a dive, like a swan dive with a spear and stab someone. They're like recon dudes with a mace. The guy gets his foot cut off at the ankle. Ben I think dives in and has an underwater fight with a guy at one point. It's really good and it's very Gladiator. I mean, that's the one thing about this movie is that when you watch this movie, you feel like they just finished watching Gladiator. Like the first time you saw a Gladiator you're like, man Gladiator. You know, obviously Gladiator is very influential, but yeah, it's like it's you know, sometimes you do a comp for a movie, you say, it's this means that this movie is like Gladiator meets Gladiator. Like it very heavily takes the disaturated visual style, the sort of vaguely humming woman on the soundtrack, the sort of you know, quasi religious spiritual hero a lot of Gladiator stuff going on. But and again, I want to compliment the film in the beginning, so we have that great fight sequence they let the last guy live and then Ben Foster essentially conscripts him into his crew. These guys are basically like medieval the expendables like Dolph Lundgren's gonna show up playing and they're like hired guns from Michael Caine, and they do some some real like shit talking of the boss kind of stuff in the sequence. And again, yeah, I went into the movie immediately with relatively low expectations, and I think that it starts very strong.

4:21 Also, and this is how the movie effectively is like Gladiator. There's a little moment where this guy, he's sort of like the rival version of Ben Foster. He's like the the Bad Expendables team leader guy in Medieval Times and at one point he sees Ben Foster and he's like, hey man, remember we're doing God's work here, and then he drags off a bloody woman who's tied to his force. That little moment, right, that's sort of like kind of dark in a way. We're very like darkly comic, but also like very cynical and yeah, just like very visually striking. They don't. I wish there was more of that. So my thing on this movie is I remember in Baltimore one time where I'm from a friend and I went to see a led Zeppelin cover band and they were backed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

5:13 I love led Zeppelin. It was awesome, it was really cool. Was it as good as seeing the real led Zeppelin? No? It was not right. So that's a kind of situation here. It's like there's there's a lot of good qualities of this movie, but you know, it's not Gladiator. A couple other examples, they kidnap a girl and the way that they escape is they all hide under a bunch of dead bodies in a wagon. At another point, a guy is impaled, and it's like, really you know, upsetting the way that he's impaled, and then you see that he's sort of still alive for a moment. It's just there's these individual scenes at moments that are very strong. Another really good battle scene and a big thing that they say in the movie and if you look up the real guy that Ben Foster is playing, they see that he never lost a battle.

5:56 So there's a scene when he is super outnumbered and it seems like he's actual she'd been trapped. But he has all these tactics that are really clever and like perfectly counter the enemy soldiers, Like he has a way to counter the archers, encounter the horsemen, encounter the foot soldiers. So again, all the battle stuff is great, and you have this kind of overqualified cast. This is what I call like a summer home movie where you're watching it and you're like, I wonder if Michael Caine is, you know, at the Palermo villa that he bought with the money from being in this movie for twenty minutes and his grandson's like, how did you you know? When did you get this villa? And he's like, well, I did a movie called medieval like that's you do kind of get that vibe. I think ultimately the shortcoming of the film and the reason that this is a you know, I have to say, kind of like what happened with when I did The Snowman recently. A lot of good qualities, good production value, good cast, but it's like the pieces don't all come together, and I think for me, the missing thing is humor. You know, Gladiator has a lot of like warmth to it, outright humor, sort of like Quansai humor. It's just a warm movie. Even though there's a lot of brutal stuff in it, it's countered by the warmth between Rulso Crowe and the other Gladiators, the sort of colorful, fun Proximo character. There's a lot of just stuff that is so fun in Gladiator, and that's kind of what's missing here. Is it's very dour. There's some stuff of i'll I guess technically spoilers, but again I apologies to everyone evolved, especially Ben Foster, who I adore and

7:30 I think it's like one of the best actors in the world. So as I've said a couple times on the show, if God forbid, Ben Foster ever hears this, forgive me, but I can't recommend this movie, and I, yeah, this happens when I do the Roulette, right, it's maybe don't watch this tonight. So I am going to say some things now that could be considered spoilers, but because I'm not really recommending you watch the film, maybe you're okay, let's do it. There's a part at the end of this movie that was so ripe for humor. Is a lion that's established in a castle. Ben Foster intentionally releases the lion so it will kill his enemies, and it kills a guy so brutally, and the staging of it is really good. Like you see it, there's like a moment where it's sort of like grabs this guy's head and like mangles it and then almost like drops the mic like the lion like it's like Chris Rock for a second, and it's like you can't even like just like a even a look that had a little bit of humor to it from the Foster. That moment would have made such a difference. I just think that humor was the missing piece for this whole movie. If there had been humor wall to wall in this thing to balance out the bleakness. I think it all would have hung together because the staging of the action is fantastic. I can't stress that enough.

8:46 It's so good. I wish more movies stage action this way. There's so many moments where you're like wow. I was reminded of seeing Unbak the Thai Warrior with Tony Jah. I saw it in a small theater in Baltimore. It was like me, my dad and a bunch of guys sitting in the back and we were all going damn, like and that. There's a bunch of moments like that in this but yeah, it just never they don't have enough fun with it. I mean that's kind of the bottom line, right If they had had more fun with it, I think us as the audience could have more fun with it. And you get to the end and they say again that this guy was undefeated in combat, which I you know, I was how do you know that? Like, how do you know that for sure? Is it just like some people said that, it's not like they have ESPN dot com. Like they're not like Lamar Jackson forty five and sixteen winning record, Like who's keeping track of those stats? So anyway, I mean a lot of credit to the quality of the production, but and I have to say also a nice character arc from Ben Foster's character. There's a there's sort of a callback to the beginning, the conscription of the last survivor that happens at the end. We've Ben Foster where this enemy momentarily seems to defeat him and he says, hey, come work for me. You're the last one. Work for me. And Ben Foster doesn't want too, so he's changed. And then the princess character, and this is a big spoiler, what is essentially the princess character. I don't think she's actually a princess and kind of still the historical stuff, but she serves that purpose of the movie. She shockingly dies at the end. So there's a lot of

10:16 good qualities to this film. It's one of those ways where it's like you wish it would you almost like if you blink, you think it's better. Like the ending, there's so much good action at the end, like very much like The Snowman. It's like it almost kind of got me back in. So I was rooting for this movie. I think there's a ton for everyone involved to be commended for but I can't and good conscience recommend it. So this is a watch this tonight roulette where I have to say, maybe don't watch this tonight. How before we wrap up, I did get a listener audio message that was sent to me regarding the Jury Duty episode. So I'm actually gonna play that for you right now. Dude, I knew that I'm racist. Joke was coming Injury Duty and I laughed my ass off.

11:01 Anyway, So good, so good. I haven't read up on the show. I'm, you know, fifteen minutes in. But are we sure this guy is not an actor himself? Like the whole thing isn't scripted and we're just pretending, like the show is pretending that he's the unaware man, you know what I'm saying. Otherwise, it's it's brilliant, it's too good. Fine. Now, I've looked deeply into this, and there's a ton of like TikTok videos of interviews with the real guy and reporting interviews, and I've read a lot about it, and everything is consistent that this guy was a real guy. It all was real. He just went for it, he didn't, you know, So I do think it's all real That is the show for today. Before I wrap up, I want to tease that I'm actually gonna be a guest on on the We Like Movies podcast where we're gonna be talking about Medieval So I suspect that will devolve into anarchy because it's kind of a flawed film, but it has again, it has so much fun stuff to talk about, so it's actually almost ideal for to talk about with a bunch of people. And yeah, I think I think it'll actually be pretty fun. So if you are looking for a longer form kind of podcast, check those guys out. That is the show for today. Until next time, Bye bye.