Stultifyingly long 2 hour epic abut the formation of the Lombard League stuffed full of fascist symbolism and Rutger Hauer. Actually it was really stuffed full of horses.

The script was a real clunker full of people telling each other historically important things the audience need to know but which they would have been fully aware - "Yes, these new taxes that the newly installed Pope Bendict the whateverth are really hurting the people..." Blah blah blah. Real local radio advertising dialogue. "Yes, June with the Lombardy League you get not one but two chances of fighting for...." Blah blah blah.

Mixed in with this guff there was a subplot about a woman who had visions, was due to be burned as a witch - but wasn't by order of the Empress (who burned someone else instead) and ended up, for some totally unexplained reason, in armour on the battlefield (though whose side she was on is anyone's guess).

The only thing that kept me watching, apart from the insane hotness of the witchy woman (Kasia Smutniak),was giggling with glee at every new interior. For some reason (maybe he had shares in a candle company) every interior was full of candles. Inside a peasant's hut late at night as the occupants try to go to sleep there were at least a dozen candles alight in the room. A dungeon cell had another dozen, and when the hero and heroine fall into bed at last, in a ramshackle hut - in daylight! - with sunlight streaming in through every crack and crevice - candles.

It rained on the funeral too. But only only round the grave itself. The people standing in the back were in brilliant sunshine and dry as bones. Between the candle scenes we had the horse scenes. Horses filled up a lot of screen time in this movie. Sometimes they went this way, sometimes they went that way, sometimes they were in slow motion. I would guess a quarter of this film's running time was spent on shots of people riding across the screen. Gallumph gallumph gallumph. People appeared and disappeared from the narrative - and then reappeared when you'd forgotten who they were. (not that you could tell because everyone wore generic medieval brown and had generic medieval dirty hair and beards).

The whole thing looks like it was shot as a miniseries and they cut it down to a movie. Only they cut out the wrong bits.

Another quid wasted in Poundland and another one off my 'Watch Rutger Hauer's Entire Career' list.

Federico Barbarossa wants to extend his empire and invades northern Italy before a decisive battle stops his advance. His main antagonist is Alberto da Giussano from Milan who having seen his city razed to the ground eventually gets several city states to combine, forming the fighting force called the Company of Death. There is also Alberto da Giussano's love story with a woman called Eleonora who has flash forwards and premonitions and Siniscalco Barozzi who is lusting after Eleonora's sister Tessa. Sounds like a heady brew but most of it is routine and unexciting.

Rutger Hauer, F. Murray Abraham and Cécile Cassel are good but the rest of the cast are uninteresting. It was difficult to tell some actors apart as they were hiding behind beards. The battle scenes had too much CGI and some scenes seemed truncated or confusing. How Eleanora ended up on the battlefield in uniform beats me.

Films about a people fighting for their freedom can be inspiring but in this case I was rooting for the conqueror.

A credible epic that concerns the German warlord Barbarossa and his extended empire (that reached deep into Europe). A fab acting performance by Raz Degan but not such a great script. Ultimately these type of movies live or die in the battle scenes and these are not the most exciting or memorable.