Shadow Of The Sword

Title: Shadow Of The Sword (15)

Year: 2005

Running Time: 115 minutes

Director: Simon Aeby

Cast: Steven Berkoff (Inquisitor), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Martin), Julie Cox (Magaretha) Notes: Also known as The Headsman. Nominated for one award.

Rating: 7

Thoughts:   Two orphans follow different paths during the Inquisition, with one heading to the church and the other becoming a soldier, and then an executioner.

This is an enjoyable story with the role of executioner being one no-one wanted. The cast is strong, and it all looks great.

The tale is well told and there is some nice pace to he narrative. It's quite long and suffers from some hack-and-slash editing, no doubt to stop it being even longer. And that does disrupt the storytelling, as does one section late on where we need to have the time scales moved on.

It's not perfect but at its heart, this is a great film. It just suffers a little from their efforts to condense it. In many ways it should be longer, not to unpick those rough edits but rather to tell us more, especially about the people being persecuted.