An action-packed slog

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It took me about four hours to read the Thief Lord, and four hours for the book to become my all time favourite. And it wasn't a case of reading a book because a movie's been made. I discovered the movie after, and fell in love with it. The actors did a wonderful job, and were very believable. And this was Aaron Johnson's second time being an on screen orphan. He was Charlie Chaplin in Shanghai Knights. The movie didn't have many changes, but a change that I absolutely adored was the flirtation between Hornet and Prop. I suspected it in the book, and I'm thrilled they got it out in the open in the movie. All in all, it was one of the best movie's I've ever seen, and it remains my favourite.

'The Thief Lord' is an enchanting little film that will keep people of all ages occupied since it's executed in a manner that isn't too childish or sugary. Based on fantasy novel by Cornelia Funke, the film centres on fourteen-year-old Prosper and six-year-old Bo, orphaned brothers who face being split up by their cruel aunt and uncle who intend to dump the elder boy in a children's home while they adopt the younger child. The boys flee to Venice, a city their mother told them was magical, where they are befriended by the mysterious Thief Lord and his band of street waifs. Stealing to provide for themselves, the children's lives are about to take another extraordinary turn as the Thief Lord's secret is unravelled and they discover why Venice truly is a place veiled of magic.The child cast in this film all give decent performances and manage to carry the film well, since it is very much a film that focuses on their characters. Rollo Weeks' Scipio is portrayed in a manner that shows him to be a less flashy, more troubled hero than Harry Potter of the films (an entirely different character to the Harry of the books). Aaron Johnson is perfect as Prosper, a young teenager caught between enjoying his own childhood and providing a parental figure to his brother while wee Jasper Harris was utterly adorable as Bo, proving that very young actors can still be talented. Their young co-stars of George MacKay, Lathaniel Dyer and Alice Connor are equally as effective in their roles. And the young cast are well-supported by their adult co-stars, particularly Jim Carter as the clumsy Victor and Alexei Sayle as the slimy Barbarossa.As an adaptation, 'The Thief Lord' is quite loyal to the books with the characters and the main plot remaining largely unchanged. The story is depicted in a manner that is involving and will endear the audience to the young characters and the musical score fitted the mood of the film perfectly. However, there were a couple of flaws, such as the scenes towards the end with the new 'children' (I don't want to elaborate too much in deference to those who haven't seen the film) were a bit too slapstick and didn't suit the rest of the film while the new version of Scipio should probably have been played by someone else since it just looked like Rollo Weeks with a bit of make-up on. And perhaps it should have been established where Proper and Bo lived previously so the audience aren't left wondering why the citizens of Venice all speak with English accents.That said, I found 'The Thief Lord' a charming film that should appeal to all ages of the family. It's a shame it's so underrated and received little acknowledgement in the UK since surely we should be supporting our talented home-grown young actors and be eager to show the world that British child acting doesn't begin and end with the Harry Potter cast.

The Thief Lord was released in my country a couple of months ago and for some reason this movie almost immediately caught my attention. A German family adventure/fantasy movie with English language and with English actors – all of that seemed quite unusual and therefore interesting to me. At the same time I never heard of Cornelia Funke's novel of the same name so I didn't know exactly what to expect from the movie. I watched Thief Lord today and actually I liked it. It was really fascinating to see something fresh and different from typical and often annoying Hollywood family stuff. For young ones Thief Lord is an enjoyable family adventure with talented young cast against the background of one of the most beautiful cities in the whole world, Venice. For grown-ups besides that it's a story of bitter loneliness and sometimes misunderstanding which unite most of the characters. Two brothers, fifteen years old Prosper and much younger Bo, after death of their parents are separated. The younger goes to the old childless relatives and Prosper has been sent to an orphanage. But brothers can't live without each other and for six years old Bo Prosper is the only person who cares about him and loves him so much. Desperate, they run away. They have nowhere to go in the whole world and they are heading to Venice, the city that their mother loved so much. But the city is not welcome to runaways with no money and only unexpected help of a mysterious boy, who called himself Thief Lord and saves them from more troubles. Bo and Prosper join him and his team of orphans who find a refuge in a deserted movie theater. Soon our heroes learn that ancient city is full of surprises and what's is more that some strange magical things can happen there. They become involved into rather unexpected events and lives of different characters collide in Venice. We meet a lonely wife and husband, who also heading to Venice, trying to find a runaway child, who was merely a way to suppress their own loneliness, a lonely detective, who was hired to find Bo and some other characters. However, finally for many of our heroes resolution salvation of their personal problems will come in a rather unexpected way for each other. But the loneliest and most suffering from that is mysterious Thief Lord himself who is trying to keep his secrets inside of him. This key character is playing by Rollo Weeks, who looks very good in his rather complicated part. Both Aaron Johnson (Prosper) and Jasper Harris also left very positive impression from their acting, self-reliance and naturalness. Despite rather short running time of the movie the development of most main characters is not bad. We know enough about them to feel sympathy or antipathy to them and we are not indifferent to them, which is very important for such a story. The acting among adult cast was also not bad with most memorable and likable performance from Jim Carter as Victor. Thief Lord in the beginning the movie is fast paced and probably a little too short but mostly it's exciting well-filmed film with interesting and original story. The soundtrack one it's own looked very good and it's a very good addition to visual part even if sometimes the music is abstracted from what we saw on screen. And let me to say that visuals for such low-budgeted production were also not too bad. If you are looking for a good non-American family adventure film on English language as an alternative for Hollywood production featuring talented cast, probably you would be unable to find better choice than Thief Lord. Also it's worth to notice that the movie mostly successfully avoids typical and clichéd for American family films crude humor and language.I know possibly I'm too generous and surely Thief Lord is not a flawless masterpiece but I rated it 9 out of 10. Unfortunately such enjoyable and beautifully shot family movies so rarely appear in our movie theaters or video stores. And the last one thing that I almost forgot to mention. The title song "Orphan skies" is pretty cool and I liked it very much.

I disliked the movie. It was action-driven and not character driven, yet there is not so much action that this worked for this movie. I found it boring. The characters were not developed well, which was disappointing as they are so dynamic in the book, and also is disappointing from a movie perspective, because people like to have characters that they can connect to. A pet peeve I have is how they immediately reveal Scipio, while in the book he is a bit more of a mystery, always wearing his mask and dissapearing at night. Another problem, this time technical, was the sound editing was bad; it was not balanced. I had to constantly adjust the volume, and I know it is not just my TV/DVD player. The kids were cute. Too bad the movie was not well done.