Just watched this after failing to do so for many, many years (I meant to watch it on its cinema release, which was a long time ago now). It’s really quite entertaining. Liv Tyler looks great as always, and it’s stuffed full of familiar faces, quite aside from some decent lead performances and the scene-stealing Alan Cumming.
The film isn’t exactly a bastion of historical accuracy, but doesn’t suffer for it – my only technical complaint would be some extremely stylistic/realistic lighting near the start making a confusing scene even harder to track. I have the feeling this may be partly due to the DVD transfer or my playback being a trifle dark, though – I cranked the brightness up after the start. I guess the director was aiming to stick with practical lighting for a dramatic look, but since period light sources are essentially pathetic, night scenes lit by candles and swinging oil-lanterns become deeply shadowed and tough to follow. That said, plenty of later but similarly lit scenes were fine (and looked great).
