Derek Jacobi's wonderfully proud, winking Chorus and Patrick Doyle's interesting (but barely) score are the sole redeeming features of this early Kenneth Branagh misfire. A gritty (in a BBC sense of the word) take on Shakespeare's mostly tedious historical play, "Henry V" gives far too much power to one man in the worst way that Branagh repeated so often to such bewildering acclaim. He not only directs and, rather pretentiously, "adapts for the screen" the words of the Bard, but also plays the title character. And sadly, he is by far no Olivier. The man has talent, to be sure, but it either wasn't here yet or it had fled temporarily when he took up this triple task. The only "flat, unraised spirit" here is Branagh himself, who essays a monotonous monarch with all the emotional depth of Keanu Reeves after an all-nighter. He even fumbles his one good instinct as a filmmaker: flashing back to "Henry IV" is an excellent way to provide backstory for people who aren't too familiar with the soap opera nature of some of Shakespeare's histories (which is primarily important here for the character of Falstaff), but the technique doesn't mesh with the rest of the picture. And why keep the Chorus? He's a purely theatrical device. He's there to tell us we have to imagine that we're in France or Southampton-- a necessity of the theater, in which all you can see is a stage and what's on it, but somewhat disconcerting in a film because the entire point of a film is to show us someplace we normally wouldn't see. Did he keep the Chorus to make his job, as a director, of sustaining our illusion that much easier? Whatever the motives (and no disrespect to the vibrant Jacobi), it was not the right decision. It's a boring, slow-to-evolve adaptation of a terrible, impossible-to-read play. (I am a fan of ol' Will, but his history plays are some of the most tedious dramas ever to plague the page.) If you're a fan of the kind of epic battle scenes of films as diverse as "Platoon" and "Gladiator," you'll definitely enjoy that aspect of the movie. Action-wise, it has its moments. But after a while, you just want Branagh to stick to doing one thing. Unfortunately, he's too self-indulgent to get that idea into his head.
Review of Henry V
