Making history sex
Added 10/13/2009
Probably, it is a realistic story of England and its history-in-making where nonenties make a go on nobelties to feel better a bit and to have something at last.
Sex, group rape, more sex and blood,blood, blood-pre-history of human rights and progress of civilization.
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Not What I Expected
Added 8/29/2009
There is just too much focus on sex in this film. The adherance to historical accuracy is viseral at best. I watched it once but won't be watching it again.
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Hateful Stinker
Added 8/29/2009
On the surface, Flesh + Blood (we should be immediately suspicious of the title's 'unique' typographical choice) looks like a brainless good time - Italian condottieri form a band of thieves and pillage across the Italian countryside, kidnapping a nobelman's daughter who falls in instant lust with the leader of our rapine band, essayed by Rutger Hauer with all the charisma of week-old socks. Only the countryside is actually Spanish and the rest of the movie is equally authentic. Peter Verhoeven, whose movies display a uniquely hateful attitude towards women, directs with the deft hand and restrained sensibilities that made his later directorial effort Showgirls so memorable. Particularly repugnant is the scene in which 20-ish Jennifer Jason Leigh is stripped naked and group-raped by Hauer's band only to find herself turned on by her own rape. Offensive is not a strong enough word to describe the treatment of the women in this film and the men fair little better - either swaggering soldiers or sniveling scholars. In conclusion: a film to be avoided at all costs by anyone possessing sense, sensibility or both.
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Flesh & Blood
Added 8/9/2009
It's all in the title, this movie is graphic, violent, and sexual. Guys will like this movie, most girls will not. The harsh nature of the movie is justified by its setting in middle age Europe which was violent and fanatical. This movie exemplifies that era well. This movie leaves you wondering who to like, the mercenary commander (rapist), the kidnapped princess (manipulative), or the educated prince trying to save her(elitist aristocrat), as all have their positive and negative attributes.
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Very much flesh and liberal blood
Added 7/15/2009
Whenever I am in the mood for a "nice" dose of delightful skin, sauced with violence and late medieval world views (the scene with Agnes and Steven kissing under the putrescent hanged men is just too weirdly casual for modern sensibilities!), I fetch Flesh and Blood and sit back and relax.
Is this film a favorite? It didn't used to be. But I've watched it, oh, three, maybe four times since it came out, and each time it is just as enjoyable. This one ages well, and it is an old film by now (which rather shocks me).
It isn't rated, being a foreign-made film (and probably somewhat extreme in the "flesh" department even by modern rating standards -- between F&B and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jennifer doesn't hide anything). But then I hate the film rating "system" anyway.
F&B has good period eye candy everywhere. It's supposed to be "1501 AD" and I can't really fault anything visual about how Verhoeven pulled of directing his own screen play. Supposedly the "parrot" cannons used early in the story to threaten the mercenaries into surrendering are American Civil War pieces (so says someone on IMDb, anyway), but you could fool me with artillery some of the time: I am more into arms and armor, and in that area F&B is good at keeping within the period.
Someone refers to The Black Death, The Plague, as "Bubonic plague" and that is surely anachronistic. Meh, so what.
The characters/cast are superb. Ronald Lacey's supporting character role as the Cardinal is psychotic to the extreme, "laced" with religious fanaticism. Great fun!
Hauer's Martin is amoral, yet in his world understandably so. Agnes, who succumbs majorly to "Stockholm Syndrome" after being abducted and raped, awakens his latent appreciation of the finer things enjoyed by the upper classes. And her emotional dichotomy between Martin and Steven creates Martin into a jealous rival: which aspect of the story is left hanging as we see Martin set out after his new-found infatuation, Agnes, who has been rejoined with her betrothed, Steven, after much shedding of blood. The continuing story is left up to the viewer and was never ruined by a sequel (a rare event it seems anymore these days).
The rest of the supporting cast are equally interesting mixes of good and bad with no clear-cut bad guys at all on either side. Everyone is just trying to get what they can and keep it for as long as they can. F&B makes me glad I live when and where I do! And I don't think the violence and grime and chaos is over-done: at times whole swathes of Europe were backwaters of the larger wars and left to their own devices in pretty much the atmosphere of decay that F&B brilliantly evokes.
Add in an excellent musical score by the under-employed Basil Poledouris, and you have a potent mix.
This film would by my first pick for creating a cult classic....
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