Armand it is difficult to define it like a good or bad movie. it is , in same measure, not exactly an adaptation. because the ambition was to create a film in which Mortenson must be great. piece in Spanish atmosphere, with a lot of fight scenes, with a script like suggestion of few novels, with dark parts, love, sacrifice, traitors, competition between strong men, duty and a super hero in old fashion style. a film who hope to present fragments of charming tale of a Modern hero with crumbs of history. result - lovely movie for the fans. and nothing really new. because all is a play with a star. and the clothes of Alatriste is just new - old version of a series of roles. so, an usual drama of dark character , mixture of courage, loyalty, sadness, hope and sacrifice.

ArchStanton1862 This movie is a deeply disappointing one because it feels like it could have been great and yet it barely achieves mediocre. The acting is great, lead by Viggo Mortenson as the title character. Apparently his accent is off and he sounds strange to Spanish speakers, but since I don't know any Spanish it didn't affect me one way or the other. The cinematography is superb, reminding me of nothing so much as the Spanish renaissance paintings that it seems to be imitating. Occasionally this leads to overly staged scenes, such as the surrender of Breda where everyone poses as they did in Velasquez's famous painting, but more often it achieves a rare level of beauty. The story, or what little I can make of it, is solid if dense. Essentially, the movie gets everything perfect except one thing. The script.I understand that they were adapting a series of novels but did they have to combine them all into one film? Couldn't they have spread them out some? Even if they never finished the series they could have gotten a few solid pictures out of doing that. As it is the film is a jumbled mess. You never get to understand any of the characters as they simply react to things in ways that don't make sense. Why did Inigo decide to kill his lover's uncle? Why did Alatriste change his mind about marrying his? They don't explain either of these things, and those questions are just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps someone who read the books will know these answers but you shouldn't have to read the books to understand the movie. Characters come and go without any reasons or motivations. Alatriste meets someone who he seems to get along with, and then later he seems to truly hate him for no reason. Incidentally, there are too many characters to keep track of. Especially since everyone looks alike in those beards.The other major problem with the writing is in the way events are connected. Scenes follow each other rapidly that have no connection with each other. Again, this all comes from trying to include too much. They jump from Flanders to Madrid, then back to Flanders, then Madrid (But ten years later), then somewhere on the coast, and finally back in Flanders again. At the end of the movie the two main characters are civilians in Madrid and then it suddenly cuts to them in military uniforms with a subtitle reading "Battle of Rocroi, 1643." No explanation is given either to how they got there or why that battle mattered at all. In fact, there is never any context given throughout the film. You get the impression through dialog that Spain's empire is failing but you never understand why or how. Again, Spanish students might know all of this like the back of their hand but nobody who hasn't studied this period will understand any of it. In short, this movie is near perfect except for an absolutely rotten script that ruins everything.

lefrang Great acting and atmosphere. But somewhere the story got lost. It does feel like 5 books was made into one movie. Which, I believe is what happened here. What a stupid idea! Maybe it's easier to follow for those who have read the books. Despite that, everything else is excellent. Viggo Mortensen is superb. And since I don't speak Spanish, I don't care if his accent may be a bit wrong.Would certainly have been even better in a theater, but it was direct to DVD. That was a shame, too.I give this a 7. With a coherent story it could have been a 10.

offers2-2 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.