Film Review: Order Of The Grail (Spain 2011)

AKA: "Captain Trueno"

AKA: Capitan Trueno Y el Santo Grial"

" A white-knuckle journey into a blood-soaked world of mystical legend and war-torn history, Order Of The Grail is a jaw-dropping tale of honour, heroism and the battle to save the holiest relic in the world.

  When a 12th Century knight-errant on a mission to rid the Holy Land of injustice discovers a mysterious chalice in the depths of a Saracen cell he is thrown into a desperate quest to save the known world from teh forces of darkness. battling a maniacal sorceror and his legion of invincible Black Warriors he must join with his sworn Saracen enemies if he is to face his destiny and restore the Rail to it's rightful place.

 The Order of the Grail is born..."

 Has anybody else noticed that all these DVDs seem to have been designed by the same team?  

 And that the blurb writers tend to skim over certain important details?

  You have to be looking very hard at the back cover to spot that this film is in Spanish with English subtitles.

 A little bit of research turns up the alternative titles you see at the top of the page and the rather interesting discovery that the film is based on a long-running Spanish comic. 

    (If you can read Spanish you will find more info here: http://www.capitan-trueno.com/los-protagonistas/)

Once again we have a DVD label trying to pull a fast one. Gits. It's not as if we wouldn't notice the small detail of everybody speaking frigging Spanish.is it? 

 Anyway, the film itself is...not bad. 

 Not the thrill-fest the blurb writer would have us believe but since blurb writers couldn't tell you the time in less than ten minutes and a dozen descriptive hyphens, that's not too much of a surprise. 

"Order Of The Grail" has quite an old-fashioned feel to it so if you like the old swashbucklers you may well enjoy this. There's a few modern touches - the FX mostly -  but not overdone and the director doesn't subscribe to the annoying modern notion that the best way to film a swordfight is  two inches away from the hero's nostril and edited in a blender. 

 Sidekicks Crispin and Goliath manage to stay the right side of "Annoying", Sigrid - exiled Viking princess and blatant love-interest - is lively enough but never quite lives up to her initial promise and Captain Thunder himself is an old-school knightly hero played straight. This is not a bad thing. 

 There are a few things I'd have liked to have seen done differently. 

  After spending the entire film showing us that there's something subterranean and 'orrible stalking our heroes, the actually payoff is a letdown. In fact, the final battle itself could have been more dynamic and the secret weapon the good-guys deploy is bordering on ass-pull. 

 I was also looking forward to seeing how our heroes dealt with the magical Black Warriors. In round one, the good guys found their weapons utterly useless So in round two, once the Black Warriors make their appearance and begin picking off Team Thunder I was sitting there thinking "Ok. This is getting awkward. How do you beat these guys? What's their weak spot?"

 Well, the weak spot is that the good guys just sorta...wander off and forget about them. 

Really? That's the best you could do? 

To sum up. Misleading packaging and obvious flaws notwithstanding. Order Of The Grail isn't a bad Medieval Swashbuckler. Not brilliant but not bad either. 

Here's the trailer if you're interested.

That's all folks.