Ironclad: Battle for Blood Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.5

Ironclad: Battle for Blood Blu-ray Movie Review

Bravehack

Reviewed by Michael Reuben July 31, 2014

Ironclad: Battle for Blood is a sequel to 2011's Ironclad only in the loosest sense of the word. It shares a title, a writer/director, a co-writer and one character played by a different actor. It also shares the same limb-hacking, blood-spurting, grime-smeared aesthetic, as director Jonathan English once again goes all out to demonstrate onscreen the medieval reality of Thomas Hobbes's famous phrase about life in a state of war being "nasty, brutish and short".

Otherwise, the films have little connection. Ironclad made gestures in the direction of history by invoking the signing of Magna Carta and portraying the subsequent siege of Rochester Castle—or rather pretending to do so, since Ironclad's version of the siege bore no relation to known facts. Battle for Blood skips past a major historical incident and goes straight to the mayhem. As my colleague Kenneth Brown noted of Ironclad, without Paul Giamatti's vivid portrayal of the villainous King John, "Ironclad would be little more than a brazenly bloody, semi-forgettable historical action-drama". Welcome to Ironclad: Battle for Blood.

Battle for Blood is set five years after the first Ironclad. Its pretext is simple. Scottish clans are attacking English castles along the border. With the English monarchy weakened after the siege of Rochester Castle, each lord must defend his own castle using whatever armed force he can cobble together. Battle for Blood depicts the siege of the castle of the Norman-descended Gilbert De Vesci (David Rintoul) by the Scottish clan headed by Maddog (Predrag Bjelac), which becomes a blood feud when the defending forces kill Maddog's son during the clan's first attack. From that point forward, Maddog will not relent, even when his own soldiers begin to question whether the De Vesci castle is worth the losses they are sustaining as assault follows assault.

And that is pretty much the entire story of Battle for Blood, except for the specifics of limbs being hacked off, heads being cleaved and various and sundry other grievous wounds being inflicted. The connection to the original Ironclad is that Gilbert De Vesci and his wife, Joan (Michelle Fairley, most recently the merciless Margot Al-Harazi on 24: Live Another Day), are aunt and uncle to Guy the Squire, one of the few survivors of Ironclad's siege of Rochester Castle. Here, however, Guy is played by Tom Austen instead of the original Ironclad's Aneurin Barnard. After Gilbert De Vesci is wounded in battle, he dispatches his young son, Hubert (Tom Rhys Harries), to seek their valiant relative's aid and also to hire such mercenaries as their limited funds will purchase.

But the cousin that Hubert finds fighting for money and resting afterward in a whore's bed isn't the man we remember from Ironclad. He's suffering the effect of some medieval form of PTSD (or perhaps it's survivor's guilt). Cynical and world-weary, he no longer believes in combat for honor or family—but he'll do it for money. Guy becomes the first mercenary that Hubert hires. He brings with him a darkly taciturn companion, Berenger (David Caves), who won't leave his side. Apparently Guy once saved Berenger's life, and Berenger feels he still owes him. That is what passes for backstory in Battle for Blood.

Hubert picks up two additional warriors before he returns. One of them is an executioner named Pierrepoint (Andy Beckwith), who takes so much joy in killing people that he's obviously suited for battle. The other is one of Pierrepoint's "customers", a woman known only as "Crazy Mary" (Twinnie Lee Moore), who, according to the jolly fellow poised to sever her head from her body, has killed a dozen men and cut the tongues out of three more, all of which prompts Guy to ransom her from the executioner's block. Mary is a potentially intriguing character, but just as with Berenger, we never learn much about her. She's more of a collection of traits than a character: part proto-feminist, part lunatic, part nymphomaniac (she gives young Hubert a rough introduction to sex). Her barely concealed animosity toward Pierrepoint provides a minor subplot, but Mary's main purpose is that of most characters in Battle for Blood: to harm the enemy and be harmed in return.

Even the family drama gets short shrift. There are references to bygone days that Guy spent with the De Vesci family, and there's even a hastily sketched romance between Guy and Blanche, the elder of the two De Vesci sisters (Roxanne McKee, who played Doreah in Game of Thrones). You can tell they're in love because they're constantly sniping at each other. The actors do their best to fill out these minor nods toward the human relationships underlying the conflict, but the writers and director don't give them much to work with, because Battle for Blood is all about the battle and blood. Maddog's klansmen storm the battlements with ladders; they throw burning branches over the walls to burn out the De Vesci forces; they mount a stealth attack in the rear while torturing a captured English fighter out front as a diversion; they gouge out eyes, rend flesh and stab peasants, women and children. The English forces respond with equal fury, hurling stones over the walls onto the advancing Scots, launching flaming tree trunks from catapults and tossing warriors off the castle tower. Nothing about this battle is glorious.

And in the end? The whole of Battle for Blood turns out to be a prelude to Europe's Hundred Years' War, which is quite a trick, since that didn't begin until over a century later. But the creators of the Ironclad franchise have never much cared about the niceties of historical accuracy. Don't be surprised if we someday see an installment entitled Ironclad: The Invasion of Normandy. They used iron there, didn't they?

Ironclad: Battle for Blood Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

While the first Ironclad was shot in Wales, the sequel was filmed entirely in Serbia, presumably as a cost-saving measure. This accounts for the many Serbian names among the crew, including that of cinematographer Zoran Popovic (War, Inc.). According to the end credits, Popovic shot Battle for Blood with the Arri Alexa. Despite the medieval muck, handheld camera work and frequent jumpcuts, the image on XLrator Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray resembles HDTV in its smoothness and clarity. It's the kind of image that has more recent converts to Blu-ray wondering why all their movies can't look this crisp and sharply defined. The Blu-ray also features excellent detail, solid blacks, natural-looking colors that aptly balance the scenic beauty of the countryside with the dirt and grime of life in a pre-industrial society and a lack of noise or interference (other than that deliberately caused by the shaky camerawork and disjointed editing). The average bitrate is on the low side at 20.50 Mbps, but the combination of letterbox bars and digital origination is an aid to compression, resulting in an absence of digital artifacts.

Ironclad: Battle for Blood Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 5.1 soundtrack for Ironclad: Battle for Blood is presented in lossless DTS-HD MA, and it's a suitably busy affair, with yells, clangs, whacks, blows from all kinds of weapons and, occasionally, horse's hooves assaulting the ears throughout the sound field, though the main action is generally in front where the camera is pointed. Several primitive boxing matches/knife fights in the tavern where Hubert finds Guy provide brief immersions in a roaring crowd, and some of the battles involve combatants running through different sonic environments, but the primary goal of the sound designers seems to have been making a lot of noise, and in that they succeeded.

The solemn, mock-classical score by German composer Andreas Weidinger (Banshee Chapter) is obviously intended to confer a tragic dignity on the proceedings that the events themselves do not earn. On its own, however, the score is quite good. It deserves a better film.

Ironclad: Battle for Blood Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Blood (1080p; 1.78:1; 15:04): This behind-the-scenes documentary includes interviews with most of the principal cast, as well as co-writer Stephen McDool. It also shows director Jonathan English at work. Most of the interviewees discuss their characters, and several comment on how much they enjoy working in Serbia.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 1:30).



• Additional Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for The Machine and The Human Race, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Ironclad: Battle for Blood Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you enjoy medieval swordplay with a fair amount of gore, the occasional bit of bare female flesh and minimal effort wasted on character development, then Ironclad: Battle for Blood should be right up your alley. I found it a chore to sit through, despite the technical proficiency of the filmmaking and the Blu-ray's production. Buyer's choice.