I don't quite understand the furious negativity about this film - as I thought it was highly watchable. I am a classical music lover, and I've known - and hugely enjoyed - the music of St Georges almost from when first recordings were released. He was certainly one of the most remarkable men of his time - supremely gifted: a brilliant violinist, composer, and swordsman (as indeed shown in the film); and known in France as "Le Mozart Noir" - the black Mozart.
The film certainly takes liberties with the facts (insofar as they are known), and the director admits that the opening musical duel between Mozart and St Georges never happened: this idea was based on the similar musical duel between Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. But so what? It makes for good cinema.
So you can't really call the film a biopic; it's more of an historical fantasy based around St Georges and the tumultuous times of pre-revolutionary France. His music gets a bit of air-play, as it should, but in fact not much really, and I found I didn't mind. I was quite happy simply to be swept along by it.
And it is really very well staged: the costuming, the scenery (both inside and out) are nicely done - I don't know how historically true they are, but for me that doesn't matter. And I thought that Kelvin Harrison Jr was quite fantastic, bringing a gravitas and a passion to his role as the Chevalier.
Weak points were his co-stars: Lucy Boynton as Marie-Antoinette seemed petty and a real light-weight, far from the imperiousness one would expect from the Queen of France. She also seems to wander about quite a bit, especially given the grumblings from the revolutionary mob. The scene in which she appears in St George's lodgings to put him down, she sounds more like an aggrieved shopper being given the wrong change. Samara Weaving is pretty enough, but seems to have no depth of character. Her husband the Marquis de Montalembert is played by Marton Csokas, who acts more like a small-time crook or stand-over merchant than a real menace.
There are times - and possibly too many of them - where the film dragged and seemed to lose its direction and focus. It could do with more rigorous editing and lose 10 or 15 minutes to tighten it up.
For all of those reasons I was going to give it 6/10, but my partner - a much more fierce and demanding critic than me - thought the film was terrific and worth 8/10. So I'm compromising with 7!
