Peter Sinclair

I gave it a go because of Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix and was astounded by how uncharacteristic of their work that this flop actually was. We were looking at our clocks 10 minutes in - what on earth was Ridley thinking? An American accent for one of France’s greatest legends and an entire support cast of Frenchman talking with strong pommy accents - pretty confusing really given that their main adversaries ( the English) also had English accents ( unsurprisingly) . Is Ridley that intimidating that no one involved in this farce had the courage to tell the boss that it just wasn’t working. “I love France” can’t be said by a French patriot in a mumbling American drawl or aristocratic English without it all becoming a very bad way to spend 2 and a bit hours. And all these problems reveal themselves very early in the film, so the iPhone gets a lot of attention. Messages and notifications become more interesting than the movie. It got worse. There was no plot, no drama, no intrigue and lots irrationality and loose ends. Josephine already had kids so why was her fertility questioned? The list is long. There was a lot of people running towards each other yelling and stabbing each other but the audience learnt very little and felt very little about what must have been a very disturbing era in French History. Next time use French actors and subtitles and try to actually portray the drama of the time.

Very witty, fun show with some slightly profound observations about fatherhood.Excellent script and acting.