Mark Schweitzer

Excellent acting, good dramatic scenes and well worth the 2+ hour length. Now, for the military historians out there - you will be fairly disappointed in how the Battle of Agincourt is portrayed. The armies are big enough, the FX are good, the armor and weapons are semi-close to being accurate. And that is about all. What you watch on screen bears little resemblance to historical accounts of the battle: 1) Central advance by dismounted English men-at-arms (The whole army advanced to bring the French in Bow range). If the English had actually done what was shown in the movie, they probably would have been wiped out. 2) Mounted French knights only charged the flanks of the English line, and were mostly driven off by English bowmen. The main French battle lines came on dismounted, and were destroyed by close-range arrows and then English foot. I counted 2 volleys of arrows; English bowmen could shoot at least six arrows a minute, and did. 3) Hardly anyone wears a surcoat or jupon with their coat-of-arms, or even a red cross of St. George, making it impossible to identify friend or foe in the muddy, bloody scrum we witness. Such identifiers were common at this time, and absolutely necessary in battle. In the movie, Henry V wears no identifying arms at all, and history makes it clear he (and most every other ranking nobleman) did in battle. 4) There is no record of English hiding in the woods on the flank. At all. This was totally made up. The English needed all their men in their battle line, and King Henry was at the center. There are other issues, but I find it frustrating that screenwriters seem to think they can come up with a better battle in their imaginations than the real (historical) thing, which, in this case, was pretty incredible. Why make stuff up? All you have to do is read a good historical account, or better yet, read the chapter on Agincourt in John Keegan's "The Face of Battle" - to understand how a few thousand Englishmen could defeat a French army about 4-5 times their size.