To me, this movie is perfection.

One of my all time favorites.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A 16th century Spanish town is plagued by some mysterious murders involving important town figures and when the sheriff Ruy de Mendoza starts his investigation on the mutilated bodies, he learns that no one else seems to want to help him out, as there's a cover up, which leaves him all in the dark. As the deaths grow, Ruy goes on to learns more. The web of deceit grows larger and secrets are being revealed. In his path is a mercenary group, which Ruy is trying to figure out who's the man behind it all and his intrusion could cost the lives of those his loves. Christopher Lambert as an actor hasn't done anything that has really grabbed my attention, other then the sci-fi flick "Fortress". His most well-known involvement in "The Highlander" series, did nothing for me. Anyhow I decided to take a chance on this medieval B-film and was pleasantly surprised with the overall effort, even though some frustrating strokes cropped up. Enchantingly sharp-etched period back-sets, props and costumes have a rich awe to them, despite the cheap origins. The premise holds up remarkably well with a broodingly elaborate mystery within a well thought up concept of effective twists and sustained involvement of the story's progression. This is because there's so much more going on behind the scenes in this conspiracy laced-script, which keeps things really tight and nebulous. The brisk location photography is genuinely polished and covered the beautifully picturesque Hungry backdrop with vivid scope. A blazingly elastic musical score paints the period and moody precisely. A solidly low-key Christopher Lambert plays in a husky and rundown portrayal of his character Ruy de Mendoza. He sounded like he needed a cough drop. Blanca Marsillach charms in her glassy part and James Faulkner weasels in. The acting while not great, is workably stable and watchable. Now what brought it down was that in patches the limp direction couldn't come to terms with the promising material, and was weakly conjured up and lacked real gusto in its delivery. Some unorthodox set-pieces flourished with atmospheric flashes of intrigue and foreboding terror, but more often it came across as frosty, repetitive and stiff. Some nasty and mutilated violence livens up the show, but the bustling action feels torpid, even though the pacing is always busy. The idea behind it is a stimulating pot-boiler, but for most part the execution is rather muddled and dry. While the material and production design is up to par, it's basically undone by feeble direction. Anyhow, it's not-too-bad and keeps you highly involved.

I was expecting a typical Christopher Lambert movie when I rented this, a pretty badly produced swashbuckling movie with some funny stuff. I was surprised to find that this movie was a little bit more....It is not a 'fun' movie but it is not meant to be. Technically the movie is pretty low quality and the script and editing is choppy but if you can get past those aspects it is worth watching. The international cast makes for a confusing variety of accents, but by the end of the movie you can see why various accents make some sense. This film is meant to inform the viewer of the history of the religious persecutions. It made an impression on me. If you have a social conscience at all, you can see a relevance to today's world events.

No need to see this film, really. Worst thing in the film is the cut, it's done really bad. I'm not sure if I've ever seen a worse cut. It's horribly fast with horrible rhythm. It's the director's second work and if the first one was as bad as this one, I wonder who let him do it. Well, maybe the ten-year gap between the movies tells something.The most blame probably goes to the script. The characters and scenes are left inexplicably shallow. The director has failed in creating any mood in the film. Most actors seem to overact most of the time, or maybe its just the bad cut than makes it feel that way. The events have gaping unrealistic holes. It's hard to get an idea of the settings of the movie, how big the city is, and so on; I got a picture that the population of the city consisted almost solely of aristocrats and guards. The movie is also littered with anachronisms, such as mentioning separation of church and state and the overacted tenderness towards children, not to mention the stereotypical view of the time period. And why use actors of mainly North-European descent, when the setting is in Spain? I believe Hollywood has a large population of actors of Spanish descent, so why not use them? Same applies to the Jewish characters. Of the major actors, I think only Carmen Marsillach was Spanish, probably none were Jewish.Occasionally, especially towards the end, I could see a tiny hint of an actually good movie. The basic plot is actually not that bad, if you think about it separately from the movie and imagine what kind of movie a decent writer and director could have done out of it. The historical setting is real. I would almost think that this is a bad script based on a decent book. Apparently the director also wrote it himself though.

An awful script and terrible direction saved only by some decent local and imported actors. Lambert is fine but not given much to work with. Most of the time he seems to have the same slightly puzzled look on his face. Blessed, Faulkner and Law do the character work that they do best and the director should be glad to have had them in. Local Hungarian actors, including Szonja Oroszlany do solid work as well proving that the country has real talent available. Would have been good to see newcomer Ben O'Brien more in the role as Lamert's deputy. Unfortunately, the script sinks the boat and viewers don't have any time to develop a relationship with the characters much less care about any of them. Quick-pace editing means that the whole story moves much too fast.