Black Marks

Reviewing a movie starring Sean Bean is tricky business. Everyone knows by now that his character dies in practically everything he's ever done, which makes any warning about spoilers fairly pointless. But what am I going to say, that the movie has "some guy" in it?

So, Black Death is a movie starring Sean Bean (looking quite Boromir/Eddard Stark-like). Read into that what you will.

Set in medieval England, this bit of historically based fiction surrounds -- as you surely guessed from the title -- the plague. A group of armed soldiers shows up at a monastery, looking to recruit a monk to serve as their guide through the local forest. Their mission, beyond the forest, is to investigate a village rumored to be completely untouched by the plague, and home to a black necromancer thwarting God's will by raising the dead. The self-doubting young monk who volunteers for the mission eventually comes face to face with this necromancer, a charismatic woman who tests his faith.

Sean Bean isn't the only notable actor in the cast, though he's likely the only name most people would recognize. Eddie Redmayne, who had a significant role in the mini-series The Pillars of the Earth, plays the true lead character, the monk Osmund. He does an excellent job of making internal conflict externally visible. The woman leading the village is played by Carice van Houten, who appeared as Melisandre starting in season 2 of Game of Thrones. I have no doubt that someone saw her work here in this film and suggested her for that role, because she certainly embodies the same evil-but-appealing qualities here.

But the story isn't written nearly as well as it's performed. The movie can't quite decide how big a mystery it wants to make of whether this necromancer truly is performing magic or not. It's as though the screenwriter knows that trying to have it both ways would make for a more compelling film, but he's too afraid to alienate an audience by abandoning rational history and embracing fantasy. As a result, even the line between isn't compellingly ambiguous enough.

The directing falls flat too. There's a lot of interesting character drama to be mined here, but the film isn't filmed or edited in a way to emphasize the performances. Instead, the focus is on violence. The film is quite brazenly gory, which for a time makes a good point about how savage the appropriately named Dark Ages were. But it quickly becomes too much, too over the top.

Ultimately, in just 90 minutes, the film runs the gamut from intriguing and unsettling to off-putting and predictable. It might be worth a watch if you've enjoyed seeing any of the actors I mentioned in other roles, but it's likely not worth your time otherwise. I give it a middle of the road C.