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Medieval France, time of the cruzades: Young knights Simon (Edward
Furlong) & Jean (Stanislas
Merhar) are sent
on a quest to find the single holiest relic, the shroud of Christ which
will give its owner unlimited power, by the priest Giovanni da Cantalupo
(Carlo Delle Piane). But unfortunately, another less noble group -
knights Ranieri (Marco Leonardi) & Vanni (Thomas Kretschmann) &
Vanni's squire Giacomo (Raoul Bova), who has sold his soul to the devil
fo make a never-yielding sword, which Vanni holds, do get wind of Jean's
& Simon's mission & thus try to find the relic on their own. It
is only when they realize this might be a larger bite than they can chew
on & they & Simon & Jean have common enemies, that the 5 of
them decide to team up. Soon, they do actually find a trace to the
relic, which leads to Greece & to decadent & evil count Amaury de la Roche
(Romano Malaspina), who uses the relic for devil-worship & other
sinister purposes. But when they finally find the seafaring priest
Delfinello (F.Murray Abraham), who agrees to take them to Greece by
ship, they are prevented from getting there as if by a higher power,
& they do realize they have to exorcise Giacomo, which Delfinallo
takes upon him. Soon they in deed succeed in getting to Greece, but are
captured immediately upon arrival - all but Giacomo, who now pays them
back the exorcism in breaking them free. Out of gratitude, Giacomo now
too is knighted, & our five knights soon find de la Roche's hideout
& manage to retrieve the relic. But taking the relic is one thing,
handing it to the right person, once in France something completely
different, as de la Roche seems to have his spies everywhere, & even
manages to have the five knights killed once they handed over the shroud
... Fortunately though, he has forgotten priest Giovanni da Cantalupo,
who is free to spill the beans about de la Roche's devil-worshipping to
the king ... Lavish production values, graphic gore effects
& many supernatural elements cannot hide the fact that the story of
this film is incredibly feeble, especially considering that the running
time of it is about 2 ¼ hours. So, the supernatural elements are
totally wasted on the movie (the never-yielding sword is introduced at
the beginning to have no effect whatsoever on the story, that Giacomo is
possessed by the devil is only shown by the fact he is seen cowering in
corners a lot [not particularly impressive], de la Roche's
devilworshipping starts & ends with the fact that he has hung up the
shroud upside down, ...), all its convoluted subplots of warring groups
are reduced to mere good versus evil-dichotomy in the long run, &
character development here is almost non-existent: Vanni, Ranireri &
Giacomo, presented as baddies in the beginning, decide to fight side by
side with Jean & Simon merely on a whim. The main problem of the
movie though (as if those mentioned above weren't enough) are Jean &
Simon themselves, the characters as well as their actors (Stanislas
Merhar & Edward Furlong resepctively), which are shown as young,
inexperienced lads who son't know shit about the world, hardly the guys
to cross a street safely, let alone find a holy relic. In accordance
with their roles, the actors show little charisma whatsoever, failing to
leave even the vaguest impression on the audience - which is a bad
thing, since they are supposed to carry the movie, but the movie would
have been just as well (most probably better) without them. A
disappointment. |
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
find The Knights of the Quest at adultvideouniverse.com
