When this movie was first released, I was living in Memphis, Tennessee, not exactly the most cine-literate city in the world, and it was only showing at one theatre in town- luckily, it was right next door to where I worked. I decided to see the late show one night after work, and was so totally blown away that I saw it every night for the next four days, in one case even getting off work early to catch it. As the first directorial outing for Kenneth Branagh, it must surely rank among the most impressive directorial debuts in history. I don't feel that I'd be overstating my point to say that not since Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" was a directorial debut so impressive. From Derek Jacobi's brilliant opening soliloquy as The Chorus to the climactic battle sequence and the following sequence of King Henry's surveying of the carnage on the battlefield, this is a film that never lags, owing to Branagh's willingness to excise certain sequences that don't translate well to film- a move that Olivier was unwilling to make for his production of Henry V back in the 40's. This film totally altered the way I thought of Shakespeare- I went from looking at a Shakespearean work as being full of literary merit, but of dubious entertainment value. However, after this film, and followed soon after by "Hamlet" with Mel Gibson and "Prospero's Books" with Sir John Gielgud, I came to realize the full entertainment value of Shakespearean story, long before the recent Shakespeare explosion brought on by the Romeo and Juliet music video with Leonardo DeCaprio.
Review of Henry V
