This never attains the full weight that its tragic love story demands, yet it’s nothing to scoff at. The filmmakers are going for an epic romance here, one set in the Dark Ages, and the fact that they haven’t delivered a laughable hoot is something of a moral victory. The soapy story, drawn from British legend, centers on a knight (James Franco)
who finds himself torn between loyalty to his king and desire for the king’s new bride (Sophia Myles). The triangle is handled with more delicacy than heaving melodrama – the king even becomes an intricately shaded character thanks to a nicely modulated performance by Rufus
Sewell.
