one flaw
Too much explicatory dialogue. Most historical films rely on a narration or brief screen roll of text explaining the When, Who, Where of the story. Becket, instead, incorporates explication in dialogue to a distracting degree, e.g., Becket's girlfriend explains in a single monologue her nationality, who her father is, how and why she "surrendered" to Becket, etc. Since all this is already known to Becket, its only purpose is to inform the audience. In that sense it's a show-stopper (in the negative definition) because it makes the lines a bit artificial and unnecessarily declamatory, and does not advance the story's forward flow. This occurs with several characters through the first part of the film. I would have prefered an initial narration or even an occasional bit of narration during the film to having the characters overly explicate themselves in dialogue.
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