Truly awful movie
This is one of the worst movies, other than low budget and student efforts, I have ever seen. I'm not a hater at all, but I feel the relatively good rating on imdb and the quality of the cast might lead others to, as I did, waste nearly 2 hours watching this rubbish.
The script is ridiculous. Painfully, cringeworthy, so. The acting is abysmal. Michael York, particularly, engages in the sort of stuff more usually seen in amateur dramatic society productions. If you ever wondered what 'scenery chewing' meant: I offer this performance as definitive. Ian McKellen looks like he isn't sure where he really is. And the lead, David Hemmings, has about as much charisma in this as an appliance salesman. No one in the entire cast gives anything worthy of a major motion picture.
The cinematography is plain clumsy. The editing is absurd and without any sense of tension or flow. (Neither helped by the sophomoric script.)
It is historical nonsense. And against this broad attempt at historical fiction is set an uninteresting romantic subplot (I am being charitable calling it such) that manages to eat up most of the screen time and goes absolutely nowhere.
I could go on but I would be compounding my wasted time. I mean only to warn others about this rubbish.
By all means indulge yourself if you are interested in learning how a film should NOT be made.