Andy Connell

Gripping violence with powerful performances; a well-crafted movie. A problem for the historian is that although the brutality of early 3rd century Rome is captured, the plot is utter nonsense.The central characters either never existed or are names plucked from history with little or no attempt to relate their portrayal to recorded events.

Entertaining dark comedy with a high vomit quotient. Bits of the history are correct; most of it is wrong or imaginary. We don't know whether Queen Anne had lesbian relations with either Sarah or Abigail; the portrayal of Abigail as a proto-Beck Sharp doesn't correspond with the evidence; Harley was not at all the satyr-like figure portrayed in the film (more like Henry St John, who doesn't appear); the stuff about Sarah being drugged, falling off a horse and ending up in a brothel is fictitious; the terms 'Prime Minister' and 'Leader of the Opposition' are anachronistic; and so on. But it's a good movie.