Outlaw King (5/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 121 minutes.

R.

Hollywood’s done it again. It takes a brutal revolutionary and makes him into a sensitive, thoughtful 21^st Century man. Robert the Bruce (Chris Pine) was nothing like that. He was a cold-blooded, violent man who fought English and Scots alike to take over the country as king. But you wouldn’t know that from this film.

It has some brutal scenes, like when Robert kills John Comyn (Callan Mulvey) and the film’s ending Battle of Loudon Hill which the film would have you believe was the final victory. It also shows Robert having it out mano-a-mano with English king Edward II. There’s no record of that personal confrontation, and that was not the final battle. That would have been The Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, seven years after the battle at Loudon Hill.

Laughable is the romantic relationship shown between Robert and his second wife, Elizabeth de Burgh (Florence Pugh). This was a political marriage which was common then. He wasn’t even around when she died in 1327.

The film shows that the English put Elizabeth in a cage during her captivity. There’s no historical record of that, but there is a record of them putting his sister Mary in a cage for four years.

But this is a movie. Director David MacKenzie has done a terrific job showing what life might have been like in the 14^th Century when Robert was fighting for Scottish Independence from England. The cinematography (Barry Ackroyd) and production values are excellent. The shots of the vast vistas of Scotland are impressive. It was fimed entirely in Scotland with 45 different locations.

But the movie is far too violent, showing one gruesome battle scene after another. The final battle seems to last forever. When you’ve seen a couple of  men run through and a few horses toppled, you’ve seen enough.