Alex Heaton (azanti0029) I saw this film recently, re-released under the title Thrones and Empires, no doubt to try and cash on the Game Of Thrones fan base.Well Game of Thrones it ain't. Its even not a good version of Hamlet. All the more shame its made by a Danish production company, the production values, acting, script and delivery have to be seen to be believed.What amazes me is how on earth they got such an amazing cast to sign on to this terrible piece of crap. Helen Mirren actually gets her boobs out again and I thought she was past doing all that by this stage. There are needless shots of female nudity thrown in, why I have no idea.Christian Bale is probably really glad no one has seen this. The finale is the big fight battle, filled with so many unintentional moments and just god awful staging along with needless smoke everywhere. The whole thing is truly dire. Avoid at all costs!

barfog-161-403673 I rarely write reviews, but having come to IMDb to see if others had been as appalled with the lack of craft displayed in this film as I was, I was shocked to see that some actually thought that this was a decent effort! Lest others conned into purchasing this abortion of a movie, let me redress the balance.To give some background, I purchased a DVD of this film, (rebranded 'Thrones & Empires') based on the strong cast list. I watched it with a growing sense of disbelief and horror at how such a slew of excellent actors could be wasted in such a truly poor film.OK, so it is clearly a film made with a very low budget but, boy, I can't recall when I last saw a film with such awful direction, editing, script (was there one?) and lack of cinematic vision.The director, Gabriel Axel, should be truly ashamed of himself for wasting such acting talent: to a man (and woman), the performances either wooden or hammy - none inhabit their roles properly. The editing is simply laughable - probably at its worst when scenes start before actors have started moving/acting ... and as for the fight scenes - oy vey! Cliché after cinematic cliché - I felt I was watching a Mel Brooks pastiche at times.A criminal waste of acting talent - and possibly the worst film I've seen, and I've seen some bad 'uns!

kello So this was quite a waste of material and casting ( Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Brian Cox, why oh why did they take these roles?). The movie plays like a badly staged Hamlet without the benefit of Shakespeare's language and plot construction. In addition, the battle scenes appeared to be "re-enactments" from a low budget history documentary.

Flame-10 Although I found the movie a little short, and some of the fighting scenes almost laughable, I found the acting incredibly well done..particularly by Gabriel Byrne (after seeing him in Little Women first I didn't know if he could pull of an evil character..he does!) I also found Christian Bales acting one of the best that I have seen in a long time..his knack for accents has been mentioned so many times it's getting almost annoying (not the accent..the mention of it..) but I was quite pleasantly pleased to find out just how good Christian Bale was at acting like a lunatic..with all the talent that he has, it's surprising that he doesn't have all of Hollywood chasing after him to be in their films!