Alatriste (2006)

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Good concept, poorly executed.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I gave it a 9... and I would have given this movie a 10 if only in the start they didn't say: "Spain ruled the world" ... which was widely acknowledged at that time and even at this time with all the historic studies that it wasn't true.Beyond the written introduction... I had to watch this movie 3 times in a row within a weeks' time in order to satisfy my believe that this theme is as close to Renaissance era as any other movie could make believe.Viggo's acting was incredible as usual... along with all other characters in the movie from start to finish.The storyline is remarkably amazing, along with the entire historical setting and cinematics. I couldn't be more happier for all history fans as I was.The ending was very aspiring, as well as "realistic" in my point of view; in comparison to Hollywood's bull-crap where the main character worships the girl at end of the movie, or in nicer words: the main character does a 100% complete change of profile at the very end of movie.But in Alatriste; Viggo starts as a mercenary and ends the movie being a mercenary... Not end it by running off with a girl and worship her till next world to come.I cannot say anymore words except please watch this if you are a history fan... it is beautiful !

When I saw the low rating, I thought it was those foreign B-movies. By "foreign", I mean out of Hollywood and/or the international scene. I thought it had a weak plot, with no inventive happenings neither the other extreme, a lot of turn arounds. What happens is that this film is very balanced, it divides well, there's mainly action and romance, although the script flows really nice. I stayed always interested in what was going to happen and also in the characters, even though I couldn't distinguish them sometimes. I've got to give credit for the representation of that time. The clothes and scenario were good and the acting was much more positive than negative. You can notice how life was at that time, really different but the same. My writing may seem incompatible with my rating, but that's because I'm bad with praising.

I just saw the DVD or a really great film called "Alatriste". I have no idea if it played in theaters in the US or is in DVD release there. My DVD was in in Spanish with Portuguese subtitles.For people who like great old rattling films that still hold up to modern expectations of acting, characterization and scripting, this thing is quite a find. Apparently the most expensive Spanish film ever made, it spares no production values, but doesn't lavish castles and battle extras on us either: it'\s strength is in its toughness and drama.It has an excellent cast, mostly of Spanish actors...top flight in Europe, not known in the US. And Viggo Mortensen in the title role. And if you thought he swash-buckles and gut checked in LOTR, check him out in this one: Alatriste makes Strider look like a schoolboy. And more lives than a cat. Mortensen, it turns out, not only speaks perfect Spanish, but 4-5 other languages. In addition to being a talented poet, painter, and jazz musician. Not that any of that matters when he's coming over the gunwales with a knife in his teeth or lunging in a lost cost while spitting up blood.There are plenty of cloaks and daggers in this sucker. It's set in the Spanish Inquistion, who make the whole Richeliew thing a picnic by comparison. And the court is as corrupt as any ever. All backdrop to the eddy of treachery and abstract virulence that swirls around the life of a remarkable soldier and the boy he swore to raise and protect.In fact, betrayal could be the main them of this thing. Almost everybody in it gets sold out in manner most foul. Noble deeds are rewarded with backstabbing, metaphorical and literal. Courageous love gets trampled into the sewer. And they soldier on while the poets gets jailed, the kid sent to the galleys, the women taken and debased, friends turned against friends then murdered for it.There are two powerful love stories here: Alatriste for an actress and the kid for a future Grandee of Spain. Both get degraded at the hands of the same man. Naturally somebody whose live they saved and fortune they preserved at the cost of their own blood and honor. It's love of the most guarded, dare not even touch, foiled at the last minute, wept over too late kind, mostly. Jerking tears and gut with the same deft hand. Deft, but artless. There are not pretensions about this script. Even though it contains literal poetry, a night at the theater, courtly language by dissembling villains.It's one of those films whose measure is that it just keeps going on and on. You get caught up and keep moving on to different levels and scenarios. Which brings up a point that occurred to me halfway through: it is NOT based on the popular "three act/pyramid climax" model. It moves from one set-up to another like Barry Lyndon or The Three Musketeers or the great picaresque novels.The comparison to Musketeers is an apt one, but it could also be measured by several films that define this genre. By "Three Musketeers" I mean the really great 1973 two-parter with George MacDonald Frazier screenplay and the brooding Oliver Reed. It's definitely in the "down and dirty" mode that film established for sword fights: no nice clashing foils and lace in this baby. You're down in the mud, fighting dirty and choking on your own vomit while getting sold down the river. And Morteson does it with every bit the grim irony Reed brought to Porthos.There are moments reminiscent of The Ten Commandments: not just the galley sequence, but also the scene in the "Hospital for Syphilitics", as good a living end as the leper colony. And handled without the bathos but drenched in a truly moving emotional state.There is a battle to take a ship that would stand up with any pirate movie ever, a battle in the fog and rain that Ridley Scott would die for, drop-dead battlefield cynicism that show up writers like Tarantino to be talented children.There is not idea of "happy ending" here. Everybody you care about comes to a wretched, frustrating end. But there it is: "Death is just the paperwork", like a character says. You see it coming, so you stand up straight, hold your wounds together and try to lift your sword one more time.This is an action film for grownups, a beautiful period film for realists, a romance for the "back to the wall, laughing chance" devotees...a good old time swashbuckler for our own times and sensibilities.

"Alatriste" is a masterpiece that will undoubtedly be misunderstood for years to come...though set in the same period as the more familiar and light-hearted "Three Musketeers", it is one of the few films that realistically portrays life in that era. This is a much darker view of the age: only the wealthy elite live well, and the degree to which others toady to them is the degree to which they too, will live well and succeed. Justice is rare; starvation and poverty, religious fanaticism is rife. Spain, the great power of Europe, is well on the road to economic collapse after years of squandering its wealth and manpower in costly wars under the weak and incompetent Hapsburg monarch Felipe IV. Its valiant surviving veterans like Alatriste are given nothing but the proud but empty title of hidalgo and are reduced, if not to begging, to hiring themselves out for private vendettas and treacherous assassinations plotted by one or another vicious "noble" faction, thus incurring the enmity of another faction. This is not your usual flamboyantly flimsy swashbuckler, but a grim and gritty picture of the near destitute and perilous life of a soldier who must support himself as best he can with the only skills he has as a mercenery for hire in civilian life. This is more of a film depicting the specific problems of life in this period and setting than it is about a story plot; it is a profound meditation on a great and glorious imperialist nation eroding from within, slowly going the course of ruin and as such it gives one of the most unforgettable glimpses of a bygone age ever to be captured on film. It's a magnificent work of art but will probably be appreciated only by those with a great interest in history which, alas, is not the general public.