Jul. 19, 2002 - 11:34 pm
the first (and possibly only one?) Patrick McGoohan film for this weekend. he only had a supporting role in this one, but he did a great job nevertheless. this film was actually nominated for a couple of Oscars. Vanessa Redgrave starred as Mary, and was nominated for Best Actress. the film also features the wonderful music of John Barry which was nominated. and although it was not his best work, and wasn't featured extremely prominently in the film, he always does something great. see the entry on Out of Africa (1985) for more on that.
this film is the story of Mary's rise and fall in power in Scotland and England during the reign of Elizabeth. i never really knew too much about her or that situation/conflict between her and Elizabeth, so this was a great historical film for me to see. very interesting in that aspect.
as far as the acting, it was really really good. the most interesting part to me was seeing Timothy Dalton. he played this sort of insane, violent, homosexual coward guy. of course the great Queen Mary, being the romantic moron that she was, married the guy because she thought he was sweet and "beautiful". his hair is dyed blonde, as are his eyebrows for this role. and if you know what Timothy Dalton normally looks like as James Bond with jet black hair, you are just weirded out by his appearance here. so Mary has to play tug of war with her new power-hungry idiot coward husband, along with Elizabeth.
it was also good to see Patrick McGoohan in another actual feature film. his role was rather small, as he was part of the supporting cast, but he had a slight Scottish accent for the film. i thought that was quite ironic that he was playing the part of Scottish royalty after having been filled so much with hatred for Scots in Braveheart (1995). of course Mary, Queen of Scots came out 24 years prior to that film, so that kind of reverses the whole thing.
so this film was not supremely great. the plot was slow, the director did not do anything remotely creative in making the film emotive, and John Barry's music took too much of a back seat to the action and other audio tracks. no interesting cinematography here either. so it was ok, but i doubt i'll ever watch it again. final result - 5/10.