1/5 Catastrophic. A terrible film. Ineptly conceived and executed, it's almost impossible to imagine any audience getting anything out of this.

2/5 Poor. A bad film. You should only really sit though this if you’re a big fan of an associated actor or director, otherwise, skip it.

3/5 Decent. A good film. Entertaining enough, but is either deeply flawed or simply lacks anything to make it outstanding.

4/5 Recommended. A very strong film. Highly recommended, particularly to genre fans, but which has some minor problems.

5/5 Exceptional. One of the finest of its kind. A film that should be recommended to any movie lover.

Flesh and Blood

Dir: Paul Verhoeven

Cast: Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Burlinson,

Ronald Lacey, Nancy Cartwright

Paul Verhoeven's oft-maligned English language debut is in fact a rollickingly good entertainment. A medieval set hack and slash fest it is perhaps the perfect distillation, in both does exactly what it says on the tin title and content, of the Dutch director's main cinematic interests.

For his first American film Verhoeven attracted a fine cast including his frequent collaborator Rutger Hauer, himself a then recent import to Hollywood and Jennifer Jason Leigh, who Verhoeven has called ‘the best actress in America’.

Hauer plays Martin, the leader of a rag tag band of mercenaries who snatches Leigh; a princess from the man she's supposed to marry as revenge after he and his gang are not paid after winning back a city.

On this threadbare story Verhoeven hangs a series of truly arresting images. Many films have depicted the middle ages, but few have achieved the level of verisimilitude that Verhoeven does here, Flesh and Blood is a dirty film, watching it one can almost smell the stench of the time and place, particularly in an early scene that takes place at a tree where the rotting corpse of a hanged man dangles.

The performances are a bit of a mixed bag. Hauer, now comfortable with English, is as good as he ever was in Verhoeven’s Dutch films, giving Martin a growing moral complexity with each passing scene. Jennifer Jason Leigh, on the face of it a perfect paring with Verhoeven, is bizarre casting as Agnes, the virginal princess with a rather unimpressive English accent, and she never seems entirely comfortable. She does her best though, and to her credit is not content to simply play the damsel in distress. Agnes learns to be cunning and conniving, to use her body to her advantage, and Leigh plays this intelligence and strength well. Otherwise the performances are a bit too broad, which is perhaps due to the language barrier that was still an issue for Verhoeven at the time, though there’s a notable exception in Ronald Lacey’s brilliant turn as a boundlessly evil priest.

As you might expect the ingredients of the title come thick and fast. Hauer and his violent band slice and dice all in their way, thus providing most of the blood. Leigh provides the bulk of the flesh; never a shy actress she has about six completely gratuitous nude scenes, though few of them are any fun to watch. On the flesh side it's interesting as side note that Nancy Cartwright, Bart Simpson herself, also has a brief nude scene.

Plot wise Flesh and Blood is no great shakes but it makes up for that in sheer intensity and with strong direction from Verhoeven and decent central performances, which make it nastily entertaining.

Film: 3/5

JJL 3/5