Inspired by a little-known episode in English history, this blood-soaked 13th-century actioner may not have the budget to compete with Hollywood’s historical epics. But, in common with its heroes, it faces big odds with a hardy combo of tenacity and savagery.
In 1215, the megalomaniacal King John (Paul Giamatti), having been forced to sign the Magna Carta, seeks payback on the barons who coerced his endorsement of the power-limiting document. With the pope’s blessing, he aims to reclaim country-wide control.
Standing in his way are a small band of rebels defending Rochester castle (then a pivotal garrison in Southern England) against a siege by John’s Danish army.
Leading the resistance is Brian Cox’s Baron Albany, alongside grizzled mercs Jason Flemyng and Mackenzie Crook and James Purefoy’s templar Knight, Thomas Marshall.
One of the script’s few fictional characters, Marshall also proves less sketchy than the stereotype-edging rest. On top of the mounting threat of annihilation and/or starvation, Marshall is grappling with vows of silence and celibacy, the latter put to the test by Kate Mara’s young baroness Isabel. Alas, such sparks of human interest are often doused, not least by a couple of cheesily obvious sword-metaphors.
Luckily, when it comes to literal blade-brandishing, director Jonathan English nails it.
Despite the budgetary constraints, the aptly named filmmaker orchestrates the ample violence with verve, crafting one of the bloodiest Brit-flicks of recent times. Heads are hacked, bodies split, tongues sliced, hands (and feet) cleaved…
English namechecks both The Vikings and El Cid as influences, but there’s more than a doff of the scabbard to The Alamo and Seven Samurai.
The resulting tone stays the right side of solemn, revelling in the grit and gore. And while Purefoy broods manfully, jaw-clenched throughout, Giamatti plays to the rafters, his John a bug-eyed, scenery-gnawing sadist.
A ripping yarn capably told, this cinematic history lesson may not be wholly factually sound, but scores brownie points for unflinching brutality and ruthless realism.
Apparently the movies are a nasty business. This essentially sums up the overarching message of Four Dogs and a Bone, a short satire from John Patrick Shanley that exposes the manipulation, back-stabbing and corruption behind the money-spinning American film industry. So tell us something we didn’t know.
This might all be very familiar – after all, parodies of Hollywood have been making the rounds since Singin’ in the Rain – but there are a few amusing landmarks along the way on Shanley’s journey over well-trodden ground. The four scrapping dogs fighting tooth and claw for the bone of a floundering movie are a jaded producer, a wide-eyed writer and two ambitious actresses, each doing whatever they can to grasp creative control and make their name.
Rock’n'Roll Theatre’s production takes a while to pick up and the first scene is a drab meander through movie-making cliche as a stereotypical money-counting producer, played in suitably slimy style by Daniel O’Meara, is plotting with one of the lead actresses. Amy Tez does her best as the perpetually chanting, compulsively lying Brenda, whose greatest wish in life is to be famous, but the overly long scene falls flat and neither O’Meara or Tez have quite the comic touch to wring out the few laughs in Shanley’s script.
Thankfully it is all uphill from here, with the somewhat lacklustre mood being lifted by the arrival of Laura Pradelska and the excellent Joe Jameson as scheming actress Collette and naive writer Victor respectively. Pradelska’s Collette is a husky voiced seductress prepared to do whatever it takes to save herself from becoming a dreaded ‘character actress’, delivering some of the funniest lines of the play with aplomb and giving the character just enough of a hint of vulnerability.
But it is Jameson who is the real star of the piece, emerging as the glittering diamond in the sometimes rough exterior of this production. His portrayal of the inexperienced Victor is spot on, combining artistic neurosis with appealing vulnerability and adding just the right the subconscious undercurrent of ambition to explains his later actions.
However, while watchable and at times cuttingly funny, there is not quite enough wit or originality to justify raking over this old territory and we are left with the inescapable sense that the play, much like the movie it depicts, lacks any real direction or point.