Customer Reviews

Lionheart [VHS]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This movie can be interpreted as the triumph of a righteous dream over many obstacles. Our Hero wants to join King Richard the Lionheart (hence the title) on crusade. His father wants him to remain at home. He is brought to a battle and realizes the horror of war, and winds up getting lost. No longer having his father to hold him back, he tries to find King Richard on his own and soon has a following of children, each with their own special talents. They triumph over various obstacles, most significantly a former crusader knight who has lost his faith and wants to capture the kids and sell them into slavery. There is a predictable showdown and feel-good reconciliation at the end.

The idea of a children's crusade is based on true history, but the real story wasn't quite as pleasant. There is a character of a young woman who wants to be a knight and wins a tournament. While there are examples of warrior women in history, this particular character seems based more on the modern Tatum O'Neal in "Bad News Bears" concept.

The costumes and armor, for the most part, only slightly resemble period patterns. The one-on-one fights are alright as such things go, but the battle scene seems oddly half-hearted. When we finally get to meet King Richard, for some reason we never get a good look at him. We hear his voice and watch the people watching him, we see him in a long shot, and one medium-profile, but why, if this is the guy we've been waiting for, don't we get a good payoff, like in "Robin Hood" or "Ivanhoe"?

These weaknesses kept the movie from really appealing to me much. The film maker's message that if you really believe in something and follow that belief it will all turn out right in the end does come through, but it does force an ending that seemes a little trite. I imagine younger and less demanding audiences will find it enjoyable enough and absorb that message.

Lionheart - The Children's Crusade was an interesting find in a bargain bin at a video shop - a medieval epic that I'd never even heard of from the director of Patton, produced by Coppola and with music by Jerry Goldsmith. Looking it up on the IMDb, not many others have either: it only seems to have played a week in Detroit! Why? Well, the obvious reason is it's not very good.

Its got a solid script about a disgraced young French knight who finds himself leading a bunch of abandoned children to the Holy Land to join King Richard's crusade and coming up against Gabriel Byrne's disillusioned crusader turned child-slave-trader. But it often looks like chunks are missing, and the kids are pretty awful: Eric Stoltz very effeminate and uncharismatic as the lead, Dexter Fletcher irritating as the lovable Artful Dodger type and Nicola Cowper a one-woman petrified forest as the love interest - I've never, ever seen an actress stay as rigidly immobile or as impervious to emotion as this gal. It's like watching a beautifully made up corpse in early rigor mortis for 105 minutes. Only Deborah Moore seems to give it a bit of wellie as a tomboyish female whose far more manly than the hero.

Bits of it do work, and Byrne's dark knight character is genuinely interesting and gets all the best dialogue, but the main interest is Jerry Goldsmith's astonishingly good score, one of the best I've ever heard for an epic even if it disappears towards the end. Worth a look but set expectations on low.

Lion Heart is no Excalibur or Braveheart but it is still one of the few good medieval/fantasy movies out there. Gabriel Byrne plays the Black Prince. The actor who portrayed Sir Lancelot in Excalibur is in this movie also.

I really enjoyed this movie. It had a very uplifting theme, and feel good ending that made you smile. I'm not going to go over what its about exactly, but speak of what made me like it so much.

What spoke to me about this movie is the overall feeling and theme. Its an idea, a concept about hope and the human spirit. Like a dream of Camelot, or the dream of American it is rag tag bunch of children whose future is no brighter than the moment they are living in, reaching for something else despite all odds, and living in the darkest circumstances of their lives. Its about knights, and dreams and hope, when you have no tangible reason to hope. Its about a desperate need to find something better, even knowing you are bound to fail. It is an overall idea, concept, tacked onto the legend of Richard The Lionheart.

It's pied-piper kind of story. If you like fairy-tales there is also that feel about it. If you like Knights tales you definately get that from it in a somewhat "romantic manner vs romance". If you like tales of the human spirit and faith that is also there. Overall it made me smile. It made me "feel good" watching it, and I like Eric Stoltz who plays the lead character. There is none of the heavy darkness that you find in many of the Knight like tales we find today. It is fun, light hearted movie. I like the light use of mysticism that you find in most Knight & King era tales. It's a family movie.

I really enjoyed this movie. It had a very uplifting theme, and feel good ending that made you smile. I'm not going to go over what its about exactly, but speak of what made me like it so much.

What spoke to me about this movie is the overall feeling and theme. Its an idea, a concept about hope and the human spirit. Like a dream of Camelot, or the dream of American it is rag tag bunch of children whose future is no brighter than the moment they are living in reaching for something else despite all odds, and living in the darkest circumstances of their lives. Its about knights, and dreams and hope when you have no tangilbe reason to hope. Its about desperate need to find something better, even knowing you are bound to fail. It is an overall idea, concept, tacked onto the legend of Richard The Lionheart.

It's pied-piper kind of story. If you like fairy-tales there is also that feel about it. If you like Knights tales you definately get that from it in a somewhat different manner. If you like tales of the human spirit and faith that is also there. Overall it made me smile. It made me feel good watching it, and I like Eric Stoltz who is the lead. There is none of the heavy darkness that you find in many of the Knight like tales we find today. It is fun, light hearted movie.

I saw Lionheart on my local channel and instantly loved it. I bought the video but was disappointed that it wasn't on DVD. Eric Stolz and Nicola Cowper had great chemistry together. It was a heart-warming movie of young people coming of age.

In a time when children were seen as exploitable resources and could be sold off or abandoned, here we see a young knight throw off the confines of his "class" and take the responsibility of leading a group of Paris orphans to the Holy Land. As he tells one of his friends "Do not bow to me. I am no man's Lord."

The class barriers between nobility and peasant are broken down as the group journeys south to find King Richard. Love becomes a more powerful force than social status. Robert and Blanche,(the Knight and the Circus Girl) become the Father and Mother figures to their charges. So too the headstrong and rebellious female knight at last finds a man worthy of her (how can I love a man who cannot stand up to me?) in the form of Michael (Blanche's brother). The characters find their strength, courage and love in the face of fear, death and pursuit. The villian (Gabbriel Byrne) gives a solid performance as the Black Knight.

It is more than just a flash- in- the- pan knight's tale. As a Literature Teacher, I think this movie has many levels to it. The thematic expressions delve into love, greed, compassion, inhumanity, gender relations, class relations, slavery, and the impact of the Crusades (historical, religious,economic and social)on Europe. It is a refreshing glimpse into the deep human drama that can be played out on the most humble of stages.

Films about the Children's Crusade, where hundreds of children headed for the Holy Land only to end up in the hands of slave traders, perhaps unsurprisingly seem to be doomed before they even start. Nicholas Ray could never get the money to film Henry Treece's The Children's Crusade while Andrzej Wajda's Gates to Paradise seems lost in the mists of time. Franklin J. Schaffner's penultimate film, 1987's Lionheart, barely even got released - it spent so long on the shelf being re-edited (presumably by the dead hand of executive producer and serial re-editor of other people's films Francis Ford Coppola, the co-writer of Schaffner's Patton) that not only did the film's soundtrack album nearly end up longer than the finished film but half of its child crusaders could probably have graduated university and started families of their own by the time it crept out for a one week run in Detroit. The story certainly held promise, as did Schaffner's return to the Middle Ages for the first (and last) time since The War Lord, but as ever, producers Jack Schwartzman and Talia Shire's uncanny gift for getting the least out of people looms large.

The script isn't bad and Gabriel Byrne's Black Prince, a bitterly disillusioned Crusader who constantly challenges a god who has no time for him and now makes his money as a child slave trader, makes for a strong villain. Unfortunately he ends up being pretty much the only interesting character in the movie thanks to some terrible casting of the many children's roles. Despite his Method Acting antics on the set that antagonised many on the film, Eric Stoltz's strangely somewhat effeminate hero lacks presence and power, and the entire issue of his cowardice in battle that provokes his becoming protector to a group of outcast children hit the cutting room floor and is conspicuous by its absence in the finished film. Even worse is his romantic interest Nicola Cowper, in a performance so incredibly inert you suspect narcolepsy or even undiagnosed rigor mortis, or Chris Pitt's would-be page. Only Deborah Barrymore proto-feminist would-be knight and Sammi Davis' underused thief make a positive impression amid a small army of bad child actors.

The rather lethargic pacing doesn't help. Although heavily cut to improve the film's pace, the individual scenes themselves tend to be underpowered and feel as if no-one involved was really engaged with the material, with even an early scene of knights riding to battle proceeding at a snail's pace while the action scenes are mostly clumsy and uninvolving. Much of the staging is curiously lazy and uninvolved, with a vaguely demoralised "That'll do" feel to whole sequences, with only a handful of scenes seeming to garner much enthusiasm from those behind the camera while the exterior photography is especially dreary and unappealing. The film's one real triumph is Jerry Goldsmith's superb score, but even that suffers from bad mixing and clumsy sound editing, with cues either played over completely different scenes to those intended or removed entirely. Lionheart does work in fits and starts, but it's a film that disappoints more often than it pleases. Warner Archive's DVD-R release boasts a decent 2.35:1 widescreen transfer and includes the theatrical trailer, though the voice over references to Schaffner and Patton have been curiously omitted.

This is one of those movies that never got noticed when it came out, but really deserves to be at the top of the listings. No splashy special effects, no amazing stunts, but a good, solid, well written movie which tells a good story, is superbly directed, with an amazing cast. Naturally, with Jerry Goldsmith providing the score, the background music is also excellent.
This movie should not be confused with the Jean-Clod VanDummie movie that came out at the same time.
If you don't trust me, put it in your netflix queue. Then come back here and buy it when you're done.

Lionheart was a bit of a disappointment, considering the historical theme of the movie and the presence of Gabriel Byrne among others, though by no means is it a terrible movie.
The story unfolds as the Third Crusade a.k.a. the Kings' Crusade (1189-1192), is about to head to the Holy Land for a showdown with Saladin's forces.
A young (a little too young) knight disgusted with the purposeless wars and killings taking place in Brittany and Normandy decides to find King Richard II, the Lionheart, as he journeys through France and join his crusade. It's not long before he comes across orphaned children in need of protection from slavers roaming the area, led by a fallen knight and crusader calling himself "The Dark Prince."
In short, the setting is good, the plot is average, the dialogues and the costumes are below average, the acting/casting is really bad, while the battle scenes/tactics are just terrible.
Though the potential for a good movie was definitely there it fails to take off, primarily due to the writers and the poor acting and casting.
If you interest lies with the Crusades, start off with the 1954 movie King Richard and the Crusaders, and then proceed with Kingdom of Heaven.
In a nutshell, it's an ok movie and that's about it; no masterpiece here...