leplatypus It's a remarkable movie about Middle Ages because around a witty script, we have a condensed mix of the autumn of this period: violence between men (battle) and women (rape), poor health (black plague, births mortality) and a clash between old faith & new scientific experimentation.. The cast is really good with another solid, physical performance from Haueur and a pragmatic and strong willed young Jennifer who shows tons of wisdom to stay alive… The locations, the costumes are beautiful and as often with Verhoeven, we see everything, either beautiful or disgusting… At the end, the movie is much better than medieval ones inspired (like Willow for example for the castle assault) and this director is really among my favorites! In addition the french edition got a interview with him in which he really exposes what he wanted to do… It was an essential bonus for me all the more than with all this violence and nudity, I wondered why he wanted to do a Jesus movie: he answers my question: because he is fond of history and because the gospels are the biggest historical lie ever (his opinion).

punishmentpark Paul Verhoeven's Hollywood debut (as I thought at times when watching this)? No, but it's all in English. Not English English, but with the (attempted?) American accent, and a lot of corny lines which do make it sound so. But there's way too much swearing and nudity for Hollywood here, anyway. Especially the young Jennifer Jason Leigh made an indelible impression on me when I watched this at a relatively early age, and she alone makes this new viewing worth my while.The story has loads of interesting elements and themes going on (connecting the setting of his very early work 'Floris' with themes of his more recent 'Zwartboek'), but it hardly ever comes together - if at all. The trivia here on IMDb offer some insight into why things (also) went wrong, but ultimately, there is no true excuse for delivering such a poor piece of writing for the screen.If there had been plenty of enjoyable action scenes to help forget some of those flaws, I'd be able to give out some extra points, but in that area as well, things hardly ever get impressive.The almost constantly screaming and misbehaving characters (and overacting actors) are pretty annoying on top of all that, so that only leaves lots of interesting basic ideas, some pretty steamy soft porn with beautiful Jennifer, some very nice scenery shots scenes and... the end.3 out of 10.

Jacob Goranson This movie is directed by the same man who was responsible for Robocop and Starship Troopers. Paul Verhoeven directed this before coming to Hollywood as his first English movie and is a good indication of what he was to become. Flesh+Blood holds absolutely nothing back when it comes to the medieval customs of rape, murder, and the plague.It stars Rutger Hauer, who is decent, and plays a good enough half villain, half alright guy. Jennifer Jason Leigh kind of wallows with the other B-list actors, but she really does have some parts that shine. It's interesting the things that she goes through in this movie, simply because I can't imagine another actor/actress doing the same. She said while filming her nude scenes in the castle, her feet and hands would turn blue.It's worth seeing if you want a good laugh at the exploitative nature of the medieval times. Try not to take the movie TOO seriously (although at times, that's difficult, mainly some scenes where Leigh's agony is too much to take lightly).

Charles Herold (cherold) I watched this movie because it stars two brilliant actors, Hauer and Leigh, but I only made it a third of the way through before I gave up on the endeavor.I see a lot of people here are saying, sure, it's unpleasant, but that's realistic for the middle ages. But if there's one thing I wouldn't accuse this movie of, it's realism. It's a pretty cheesy blood and guts war tale that isn't that different from ones they were making in the 1950s except it's nastier. As for life being more unpleasant in the middle ages, well, certainly life was hard, there were less creature comforts, people died younger, but still, people are people, and this movie chooses to portray really unpleasant ones, and I suspect if were were able to visit the middle ages we would find that, just like now, there were a mix of pleasant and unpleasant folk.The movie is also rather dull. The script is poorly written, the characters are cardboard.Terrible, terrible movie.