Actually, Cage's hair (wig) doesn't look all that clean here.
Two armies face each other under the desert sun. It’s Christians vs. Muslims in the world series of genocide, aka, the Crusades. Our heroes, Behmen (Nicolas Cage) and Felson (Ron Perlman) trade witty repartee via dialogue stolen from The Lord of the Rings’s Gimli and Legolas. I.e., whoever kills the most enemies gets a beer at the end of the day. Their leader, Holy Knight Guy (HKG), extolls them to fight for god.
Really? If god is so frickin’ almighty, why doesn’t he fight his own battles?
The battle ensues and it’s religious nutjob fighting religious nutjob. I don’t know who to root for in this mess. Behmen? Because this is the first time in several greasy-haired movies that Nicholas Cage has washed his hair? Yey, shampoo!
The boyz emerge victorious and continue on across the Middle East, slaughtering infidels. Finally, they arrive at a place called Smyrna. (Yeah, I admit it. I thought, “Georgia?”) HKG tells them that the city’s residents sinned against god and his holy son, Jesus Christ, and must be killed. Ah, so the answer to “What would Jesus do?” is “Kill, kill, kill.” Must’ve missed that gospel.
Behmen and Felson get down to killing. Then Behmen impales a lovely young woman on his mighty sword, and not in a sexy way. He goes all doe-eyed-sad, because he killed a gurl. He and Felson look around, see a pile of dead women and children and are shocked and surprised.
Really? You didn’t notice your fellow knights chopping down the innocent like kindling? You’ve got some mighty powers of observation.
Behmen confronts Holy Knight Guy after the battle and goes all “I don’t kill women and children.” HKG tells Behmen he will kill whoever he is ordered to kill because HKG can hear god’s voice in his ear. Behmen notes, amusingly, that that little voice might not be god. I note that there’s medication for that sort of thing and possibly an iPhone app.
Behmen and Felson flounce off the battlefield and head home.
“They’re gonna walk all the way home?” I say, stupidly.
“That’s how they got there,” observes my husband.
“D’oh. Not like there was a Crusader Air, ‘Now serving all the major battle sites in the Holy Land.’”
Back home, they come across a cute little farmhouse. The farm’s owners are in bed, covered in maggots and postules. Behmen and Felson set the farm on fire, take two horses and head for the nearest town. Felson doesn’t think going into town is a good idea, them being deserters and all. But Behmen says that the farm horses can’t carry them into the mountains.
Uh, why not? They might not be much use in battle, but as long as they can put one hoof in front of the other, they’ll take you into the mountains. Hello, stupid plot device.
Boyz go into town; get new horses; as soon as their credit card clears, they are arrested for desertion. On the way to the dungeon, they are intercepted by Priest Guy (I’m not looking up his name), who takes them to see the Cardinal who is dying of the plague. The Cardinal, Christopher Lee with a huge carbuncle and hair lip, asks the boyz to help escort The Witch to an abbey. There the monks will perform a ceremony (translation: “hang her”) and the plague will be cleansed from the land. Behmen says no, he doesn’t work for the church anymore. Felson says nothing because, for some reason, he doesn’t get a say in the matter.
And down to the dungeon they go. In the dungeon, Behmen spies the witch who is weeping because she’s been beaten by Priest Guy. She’s also pretty. Behmen suddenly decides he wants the job. He tells Priest Guy he will only take the job if the witch is given a fair trial. I don’t know what that means, this being the 14th Century. That the beatings will be suspended until she is hanged and drowned?
Off they go. They trek across gloomy landscapes and Behmen’s hair stays shiny and clean and I wonder, “What’s in that shampoo?” Predictable hijinks ensue and here’s where I just let the cat out of the bag: The lovely girl is Satan. You weren’t planning on watching this shitfest, were you?
There may have been, buried somewhere under terrible dialogue and uneven characterization, an interesting premise about corruption, power and religion. But it’s washed away under the shitty avalanche of B-movie action and horror. There’s the “Wow, I’ve never seen that before!” scene, where the boyz and company get the witch’s heavy cage/wagon over the rickety bridge over a gaping gorge, just before the bridge collapses into timbers and rope. There’s the scene where the witch summons wolves. Because nothing says evil like an unfairly maligned species that’s been hunted to the brink of extinction. Wolves eat the company’s guide, whose name I forget. Haven-hasen? Haagen-daz, yeah. Because he’s tasty. Ask any wolf.
The boyz arrive at the abbey and it’s a nice place. Really, posh, except for the dead, postule-covered monks that are laying about everywhere. Priest Guy declares that this is it. God has deserted them. No, Priest Guy, god deserted this movie. But hope is not lost because they find a book that contains spells, gospels, whatever that will somehow overcome evil. They march out into the courtyard where the witch awaits. Priest Guy starts blathering in Latin and the witch goes apeshit, melts the bars of her (his) cell, morphs into Satan with wings and flies away. Which begs the question: “Why didn’t she do this in the first place?”
The answer is the even stupider: “Because it was part of Satan’s evil plan to get to the monastery and destroy the books.”
Uh-huh. Satan, who has lovely bat wings, needs to be transported to the monastery? Satan, who can apparently read minds, doesn’t know where the book of his doom resides? Somebody kick me in the head if I ever cook up a plot device this pathetic.
Satan summons up his minions who possess the dead monks’ bodies. Zombie monks, the high point of the movie! The boyz do battle with zombies, while Priest Guy yaps away in Latin. (Satan, by the way, looks and sounds like Yoda’s taller, skinnier brother.) Zombie heads roll, but our intrepid heroes are almost overcome. Nearly everyone is killed, including Ron Perlman’s Felson, who goes out in the same way he did in Blade 2–in a blaze of fiery glory as Satan cremates him. Cool.
The altar boy (Yes, there’s an altar boy and he’s very pretty. *snerk*) reads the last of the Latin and Satan disappears, but not before Satan mortally wounds Behmen. As Behmen lays dying, the altar boy asks, “What can I do for you?”
“Call my agent. Tell him, ‘You suck,’” is the answer in my head. Behmen instead gurgles and dies. Altar Boy and now exorcized, un-demony girl, bury Priest Guy, Behmen, and Felson under rocky cairns. I wonder if they swept up Felson’s ashy remains or just built a pile of rocks and stuck his sword in it. Either way, it’s a waste of a nice sword.
Moral of the story. Don’t watch movies where Cage isn’t drunk or batshit crazy. Sane isn’t his milieu.
