Attila

Rating:
Summary: Rome saves the day again
Review: No, it's not exactly historically accurate, but this mini-series is much better than expected. It's surprisingly well directed, has some good locations and production design and boasts a better use of colour than most TV productions shot in Eastern Europe. It never gets too bogged down with the 'prophecy' guff that sank 'Vercingetorix/Druids,' although the script has much more fun with the Romans and their plots, counterplots and betrayals than the nominal lead - so much fun that it's a disappointment to be dragged back to those pesky Huns. Too often the film grinds to a halt when Attila is onscreen, with only the Romans providing any forward momentum.

The major problem is the gaping void at the centre of the show. Where it needs a charismatic, commanding and dangerous star, it gets the frankly underwhelming Gerard Butler. It's not just that Butler is an extremely limited and startlingly dull actor (he even moves badly) or that his bizarre hybrid Scottish-American accent seems so completely out of time and place. He completely fails to command the screen, his lack of screen presence rendering an already underwritten role even more anonymous. He seems more like an expendable extra from 'The Golden Voyage of Sinbad' than a man who could create an empire and take on the greatest superpower the world has ever known. It's hard to imagine anyone following him to the pub on a stag night let along across Europe on a trail of destruction.

Not that Butler is the only eccentric casting in the film - Pauline Lynch's bizarre Jolly Hockey Sticks accent makes her sound more like a refugee from the Chalet School than a credible pagan soothsayer, Reg Rogers puts such a unique spin on the obligatory idiotic emperor that you really, really hope he really is just acting, while Alice Krige's bizarre (and quickly discarded) lisp in her early scenes is very distracting. But generally it's the supporting cast that shines, with Powers Boothe the genuine star of the show. Yes, there are some misjudged moments, but he dominates the drama in a way that Butler never does.

Well worth watching, but you might find yourself wanting to use the fastforward button more than a few times in the second half.

Rating:
Summary: Attila
Review: This is a very good movie. It is a movie about a man named Attila who is the leader of the army. He is the leader of the Huns. He Beleives the huns are the greatest people of all. Kind of like hitler, but not as evil.

When he was just a little boy his parents are killed. Thats when he gets really mad. He falls in love with a girl thats part of the enemy and tries to defeat rome. A very good movie.

If you liked: The Patriot, Braveheart,or Gladiator. This would be a really good movie.

Rating:
Summary: Awsome Movie!
Review: This is one good movie. It's a mini, but it's long, and the best way to watch it is all at once...so make time and see the whole thing at once. The acting is superb (talking about Gerard Butler here). There is no one who could have played Attila better. So anyway...see this movie, it's very entertaining.

Rating:
Summary: A classic!
Review: This movie is SO GOOD and is amust see for everyone, a total must see. Just GREAT!

Rating:
Summary: Gerard Butler Saves It
Review: This movie was better than I expected, but it dragged on too long, and I did not like those sloppy, slurpy kisses in the Roman bath. However, the director may have wanted it that way, for, when Attila kissed women he truly loved, he gave decent kisses. Even though Attila was somewhat stylized and idealized, one could see his demise coming with his obsession with the bath. I enjoyed the cunning, wicked intrigue of the Romans for a while, and Tim Curry steals the show as Ned Beatty did in "Network"--a small but memorable role. But, after a while the convoluted conspiring of the Romans grew tiresome. Most enjoyable, though, were the close-up shots of Butler--too bad there were so few really good shots, showing what he can do with facial expressions (besides frowning--his most effective and chief persuasion method in this film--sorry folks, but it reminded me of Tubby in the Little LuLu comics fixing people with his "piercing glance."). But, Butler certainly is a little bit of all right, and one can feast one's eyes on him in this flick, as he displays a lot of beefcake. Also, he is especially effective dramatically in the scene in the rain at the grave of his departed woodland helper. As far as so-called historical epics go, this one is just adequate. Aside from sending one to the history books, though, it does not leave the viewer with much to think or talk about, except Gerard Butler! (And that's okay!)

Rating:
Summary: Really enjoyable movie!
Review: This movie was really fun to watch, and the battle/war scences were very intense! They used Chechz army soldiers as extras for the battle scences.

I will admit, Tim Curry 'dr franken furter from rocky horror picture show' had Me going for awhile seeing Him as Theodorus, Emporer ov Constantinople, the Eastern Empire but He did an excellent job and hopes he thinks about doing another movie about Constantinople, 'if one is ever made'...

The movie may lack in some historical content however it holds to the legends combined with what We do know historically, and at last, it was extreamly entertaining and does hold your intrested unless your a tight collard stiff lipped upper crust pompus english professor where everything must be perfectly accuret to their liking and standards.

Personally I love history, Roman History, Byzantine History, and found this movie to be extreamly fun to watch. Powers Boothe plays an excellent Flavious Atius, it would be intresting to see Powers Boothe and Timothy Dalton in a movie on Rome with Daltons award winning portral of Julius Caeser in the Hallmark classic Cleopatra. That should be some major war scences and Roman government plotting =)

Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Good film, great action, some historical flaws.
Review: This was a truly interesting film. If you like the history, or at any rate historical drama, of late antiquity, this is DEFINITELY one to see! Action is intense, and in some ways as intense as Gladiator. But unlike that film, which is merely a drama set in late 2nd Century Rome in the reign of Commodus, this one tries to be a factual telling of the life of Atilla the Hun. And unfortunately this is where the problems arise. Only a couple of fairly major flaws need to be pointed out here. 1) Theodosius II (played by Tim Curry in a great performance!) was in fact dead by the time alot of the action in this movie takes place. 2) A pivotal moment in the life of Atilla--the sacking of Mediolanum (Milan) and the subsequent invasion of the Italian peninsula are completely ignored. 3) The even more important meeting between Atilla and Pope Leo I which prevented the former from sacking Rome and bringing the empire to an early end was also totally ignored. Instead of even mentioning in passing events 2 and 3, the action skips right to the end of Attila's life! WHY?!

Rating:
Summary: Attila the Stud!
Review: USA network blurbs state Men Followed. Women Worshipped. Rome Trembled.

And Audiences Giggle.

Cross Lord of the Rings with a bodice-ripper romance and mix in a little Gladiator and you have this two-part movie starring hunky Scot Gerard Butler as the marauding king of the Scythian hordes known as the Huns. The Romans called him the Scourge of God, and the real Attila brought Europe to its knees, but Attila in this movie is played by Butler as a tormented man with a sexy overbite and some family dysfunction. There is intrigue and bloodwash aplenty. The Huns are depicted as a rather Celtic, not Asian, tribe, complete with wood sprite who delivers prophecies to Attila, King-Arthur style. These involve a gaining ownership of a sword, with which one rules the world. Okaaaay....

Decent, albeit comic, performances are given as Romans by Tim Curry and some other guy as emperor of Rome about this time frame (the year 452 or thereabouts). Powers Boothe is Roman General Flavius Aetius who alternately conspires with and against Attila. The emperor's sister, a hot-looking Roman princess in a corsety-type thing I am pretty sure did not exist in that timeframe, seduces Attila in a bath, even though he's supposed to be in love with the red haired woman his tribe captured from a village. Men never change. Alice Krige as the emperor's mother is much prettier here than she was as the Borg Queen in Star Trek but she's bitchy and conspires against everybody, even her own children.

Gerard Butler makes a sexy Attila, and he can invade my village anytime. However, he's Scottish, and seems to be affecting some kind of weird accent here, where syllables fall out of his mouth in an oddly non-commanding warrior way. Fearsome Attila gets his comeuppance on his wedding night, all right, but not in the historically accurate way. But USA's way is much more romantic and candle-lit. Complete with mighty Attila wearing a diaper configuration.

Alas, history lovers will find no great interest here. However, if you are in the mood for swashbuckling in the Braveheart mode and eye-candy in the form of Mr. Butler, this is the movie for you!

Rating:
Summary: a good historical movie
Review: Well the very first thing I watched this movie was because I LOVE Gerard Butler. But when I watched this I found it very entertaining. Forgetting the fact that my fav actor is in it this is a very good movie. I know that Attila isn't close enough to the descriptions of the real Attila but the man plays a good role. The battles were great I absolutely love this movie and recommend it. I personaly give it 6 out of 5 stars because it is entertaining not like other historical movies. and beacuse my fav actor plays the role awesomely!! I LOVE YOU GERRY!!!!

Rating:
Summary: not historical, mildly entertaining
Review: WILDLY historically flawed, with some dialogue that will no doubt bring chuckles, this little miniseries still manages to be entertaining. Whether that is due to the acting and action or the goofs made by the producers remains to the individual viewer. What's wrong with this little movie? Let's start with the Huns and their king, Attila. The Huns were a Turko-Mongol race, short, swarthy, and usually with a somewhat bowlegged stance that came from fighting, riding, eating, and even sleeping on horseback. Attila himself was described by many contemporary historical sources as short, squat, a very thin wisp of a beard on his chin, and a flat nose. He was also middle-aged at the time of his great conquests. This army and king as represented in the movie are all basically Caucasians. People, there ARE Turkish/Asiatic actors and extras out there for hire .... and all the women swooning over Gerard Butler in these comments need to balance this with historical fact. The comment that only a "good looking" person could have united/led so many is very amusing - apparently no one has taken a close look at Mussolinni, Stalin, or Winston Churchill for that matter. Also, the costumes of these Huns look like Avars, not Hunnish culture. Let's take a look at the Romans - the Empire of the fifth century was VERY different from the empire of the great caesars ... yet the uniforms and civilian dress of the Rome shown here looks no later than the time of Septimius Severus. Sorry, but the horse-hair helmets and leather skirts of the military tribunes were long past - the Romans of this time were wearing breaches and what was left of the legions was highly barbarized and calvary-emphasized. The togas of the civilians had become much more coarse and simple by that time, also. The Empire was basically Christianized by then, too - yet this miniseries depicts paganism as rampant. Another problem was that there just weren't enough extras to make the battles scenes believable. The Huns formed "hordes" - and these were not patrol-sized groups of a hundred horseman riding around - historians show these armies numbered nominally around 60,000. And the main battle - somewhere near modern Chalons or Troyes - the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains - had the combatants numbering somewhere between 300,000 to half a million. Showing this battle to be between a couple of hundred men was anticlimatic in the extreme. Good camerawork could have avoided this ... see BRAVEHEART, FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, SPARTACUS, or CLEOPATRA. Although many may have felt some of the violence was too much in this film, the reality was FAR worse - Attila was mild to those who submitted, but the mass slaughter the Huns committed in battle was rivaled in pre-20th century only by the Mongols of Genghiz Khan. Some cities in Italy were so destroyed that the next generation couldn't accurately find where they existed. Having said all this, I liked the film as a piece of entertainment and taking certain ludicrous errors into consideration, recommend it as a nice diversion. The DVD is nicely authored in 1:77:1 and has some decent extras.