Marko Grönroos No need to see this film, really. Worst thing in the film is the cut, it's done really bad. I'm not sure if I've ever seen a worse cut. It's horribly fast with horrible rhythm. It's the director's second work and if the first one was as bad as this one, I wonder who let him do it. Well, maybe the ten-year gap between the movies tells something.The most blame probably goes to the script. The characters and scenes are left inexplicably shallow. The director has failed in creating any mood in the film. Most actors seem to overact most of the time, or maybe its just the bad cut than makes it feel that way. The events have gaping unrealistic holes. It's hard to get an idea of the settings of the movie, how big the city is, and so on; I got a picture that the population of the city consisted almost solely of aristocrats and guards. The movie is also littered with anachronisms, such as mentioning separation of church and state and the overacted tenderness towards children, not to mention the stereotypical view of the time period. And why use actors of mainly North-European descent, when the setting is in Spain? I believe Hollywood has a large population of actors of Spanish descent, so why not use them? Same applies to the Jewish characters. Of the major actors, I think only Carmen Marsillach was Spanish, probably none were Jewish.Occasionally, especially towards the end, I could see a tiny hint of an actually good movie. The basic plot is actually not that bad, if you think about it separately from the movie and imagine what kind of movie a decent writer and director could have done out of it. The historical setting is real. I would almost think that this is a bad script based on a decent book. Apparently the director also wrote it himself though.

tikva1098 I agree with the previous commenter about the script and the fast pace of the editing. It does the movie disservice. What would have made it better would have been to let the characters shine through a little more. I do think that for a low budget film it had an interesting, well thought out story. I was surprised by this, and despite the poorly choreographed fight scenes (why were all fighters, even henchmen, better than Lambert), I was still interested because of the historical engagement of the plot. I also agree with the previous commenter that the Hungarian actors were good. I think it is clearly a B movie, but not a bad one.

gazebo This movie takes place in Spain during the horrible Spanish Inquisition. Nobles are being murdered horribly and letters are carved into the corpses' chests. The sheriff, a good and decent man (played by Lambert) tries to find out who killed these nobles. The sheriff is met by resistance from the inquisitor and even his own boss (played by Brian Blessed) when he tries to uncover this murder mystery. Eventually, the sheriff realizes that these murders are connected to his family history and he must act quickly to save his life and the lives of his family.I love the look of this film. It is a costume drama and a murder mystery and it takes place during a particularly horrible time in Spain's history.The acting is very good. Congratulations to all the actors in this film, they've really outdid themselves. Christopher Lambert actually does a really decent job in this film and for the first time, I'm watching this guy actually act and not go on auto-pilot. The plot of this film is extremely intriguing and I greatly respect a film that still makes me think after the movie is long over.This is a beautiful looking film and a good mystery, though I must warn some viewers that some of the murders are extremely graphic but it is not gratuitous violence as it is central to the story.Absolutely worth viewing, maybe even worth viewing more than once.

whynot_joek An awful script and terrible direction saved only by some decent local and imported actors. Lambert is fine but not given much to work with. Most of the time he seems to have the same slightly puzzled look on his face. Blessed, Faulkner and Law do the character work that they do best and the director should be glad to have had them in. Local Hungarian actors, including Szonja Oroszlany do solid work as well proving that the country has real talent available. Would have been good to see newcomer Ben O'Brien more in the role as Lamert's deputy. Unfortunately, the script sinks the boat and viewers don't have any time to develop a relationship with the characters much less care about any of them. Quick-pace editing means that the whole story moves much too fast.