Iron Lord [DVD]

I recently reviewed the excellent Russian historical film "1612", and here is another one which is up to the same high standards. It is refereshing to see the Russians making a very good fist out of costume films. These low budget straight to DVD films seem to have a reasonably healthy market, although saturation of the market may sort out the chaff from the wheat. It is certainly a film that will have a limited appeal, simply by virtue of the fact that it is in the Russian language and is solely concerned with Russian history. Not everyones cup of tea, but certainly mine. Although the film has been described in reviews as low budget, it does not look it. Plenty of Roubles seem to have been spent on lots of actors, decent costumes and even some half decent CGI.

The story is set in 11th century Russia, and follows the efforts of Prince Yaroslav to unite the peoples of Rostov and a powerful tribe known as "The People of the Bear", for reasons that soon become obvious. This is not so easy when the lawless country is infested with brigands, slave traders and mercenaries. He also has to contend with the mysterious mind that orchestrates the movements of the brigands, who is known only as 'The Owl". His identity which is revealed at the end of the film, comes as a complete surprise. Well it was to me anyway! There is lots of healthy action along the way. A few throats get cut, the odd serf gets skewered, and one or two get a good old fashioned torturing. We also get to see lots of heavily bearded men running around in ever decreasing circles. All good fun really. Aleksandr Ivashkevich does a decent job as Yaroslav, although I see one cruel reviewer thought he looked remarkably like Graham Chapman in "The Life of Brian". Very funny I must say! There is certainly a resemblance I have to admit, but Chapman would have struggled to fill Yaroslav's boots in the way that Ivashkevich has done.

The film actually covers a period of Russian history that interests me, especially the settling of the Norse Vikings along the trade route of the Volga River, using it to travel as far away as Constantinople where some served on the emperors Varangian guard. In this film the Norse are represented as the mercenaries that they sometimes were, although many later integrated with the local populace. The film unusually has a Christian message which shows the openness of todays Russian cinema. This film is not to be confused with the similarly titled "Ironclad" which has a British cast. The running time of just over the hour and a half mark is just right, allowing the film to sustain the interest for the entire duration. It is a long time since I watched "Sergei Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky" for film studies, and was impressed by what the Russians could achieve. This is admittedly not of that epic scale or quality, but it shows decent historical films are still being made in the new Russia. High on my want list is the Penguin classics book "Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North", not available until November unfortunately. Fadlan was an Arab traveller amongst the Rus peoples on the Volga, who gives the only eye witness account of a Viking boat funeral. His adventures inspired Michael Crichton to write his cracking short story "Eaters of the Dead" based around the Beowulf poem, and made into that entertaining film "The Seventh Warrior" starring Antonio Banderas as Fadlan himself. The Fadlan book has to be worth a shout even though it is set a little before the time of this film. This is a bare bones DVD with no extras. Well done the Russians, keep them coming.

This is another great Russian film dealing with its early history. Set in 1010 when much of the land is still Pagan, this is the story of the Christian Prince of Rostov, Yaroslav (Aleksandr Ivashkevich). He is expanding the land that pay them tribute in return for protection, The land is ravaged by bandits, who not only nick the tribute, but cart the people off to be sold down the Volga to the Bulgars as slaves.

This then opens with an attack on one of their vassal villages, Yaroslav goes after them; despite being a tad outnumbered they decide to take them on. This is because they have a secret weapon, in the shape of Vikings or Varangians, as they call them. In battle they take certain medicinal aids that make them go berserk (where the word comes from) and become fearsome berserkers. After the fight they discover a woman from the Bear tribe, pagans who worship, you guessed it, a bear. She is hostile, but Yaroslav decides to take her home in the hope of bringing the Bear people into his ever growing principality and we sort of pick up she is fair cracking on the eye,as my Austarlian mate would say.

Well as you can guess things don't go exactly according to plan, there is a traitor in his camp, there is a love tryst, there are power struggles and the melting of hearts. There is also quite a ferocious bear, some ruddy good fighting and heaps of action. Director Dmitri Korobkin has done a spot on job of balancing the action against plot development, and the character development is both subtle, but predictable at times. He gets excellent to good performances from the entire cast and there are much needed comic asides, often when you least expect it.

It is in Russian with good sub titles, except some of the place names are put up in Russian and not reciprocated in English, which is a bit poor. But like 1612 1612 [DVD] this is a ruddy good historically based action film, and I must say if Russia continues in this vain we are in for more future treats, I thoroughly recommend.

It's good. Well acted, with nicely staged action scenes, good costumes and special effects. The script moves along at a fair pace and at 90 odd minutes it's not overly long. Ideally I would have wanted a bigger budget, to show more of the world in which the story takes place, and more folk in the battle scenes. But we are no longer in the days of the massive budgets enjoyed by Bondarchuck and Eisenstein, and I am grateful that even a medium budget was available to support this film. Buy it and let's hope they make some more!