Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie

Subject: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 27 May 19 - 12:39 PM

On Netflix now... "Outlaw King"

It's sort of is but isn't but could be even if it isn't a sequel to "Brave Heart"..

Period style folkie music dominates almost every scene,
the End credits list of singers and musicians is of epic proportions...

An In-Depth Look at the On-Set Music for David Mackenzie's 'Outlaw King'


If you like Game of Thrones, and Braveheart...

2 hours of stirring rampant Scots nationalism..
I'm a many generations born and bred English west country bloke,
but watching this movie made even me feel proud to be Scottish.. blimey...???

My only complaint is it looks like a 4 hour movie brutally edited down to 2 hours of rushed narrative pacing..

Which apparently is what actually happend in the cutting room...

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 27 May 19 - 01:41 PM

Robert the Bruce, is it?

portrayed by Chris Pine,
isn't he the one in the Guardians of the Galaxy films?
With Groot and that raccoon??

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: GUEST,Pfr in bathroom
Date: 27 May 19 - 01:46 PM

No. He's Cap'n Kirk..
He learnt his accent off Scotty.

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 27 May 19 - 02:03 PM

The acting is good enough for this sort of loosely based on fact historical epic..
I'd be willing to sit through an extended Director's cut if one is ever released...

No blatantly obvious American accents...

Pine may actually turn out to be a proper actor if given the right roles now he is getting older.....

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 27 May 19 - 02:04 PM

I had Chris Pine mixed up with Chris Pratt.
I do apologize.

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 27 May 19 - 02:09 PM

Well, I did see Chris Pine in that feature-film adaptation
of Madeleine L'Engle's
A Wrinkle in Time,
dominated by
a Godzilla-scale Oprah Winfrey.

Sorry, but
that is indeed the most indelible part of the film.
Chris Pine was the
imprisoned scientist father
held captive on the far side of the tesseract.

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 27 May 19 - 02:22 PM

Intersting perhaps...

but not much to do with the copious use of early folkie style music
and numerouus musicians and singers employed on this movie...

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: Allan Conn
Date: 28 May 19 - 12:15 PM

Watched in on the day of release a few months ago excited to see the all to brief glimpses of Berwick-on-Tweed. My daughter has just started working as a graphic designer and is currently employed on new tourist signs for the town which are in connection with the filming. Quite enjoyed the film as an action yarn, but thought Pine's character was quite wooden, and it was a very silly ending. The rest was at least half believable even if not always exactly historically accurate.

Re the not a sequel to Braveheart. There is another Robert the Bruce film just about to come out where the title role is played by the guy who played Bruce in Braveheart. He is saying it is not a sequel but I think everyone will take it as such.

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 May 19 - 12:42 PM

I saw it a bit back on either Netflix or Amazon. May revisit it tonight :-)

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 May 19 - 12:57 PM

I watched "Black 47" last night..

That's a good brutal Irish Western revenge movie.. [Potato Western...???]

Folkie songs do pop up occasionally,
and I'm convinced there are a few brief 'tributes' to Morricone...???

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: GUEST
Date: 28 May 19 - 02:51 PM

Wonder why they bothered giving Bruce a Scots accent? He was a Norman knight. Same with the recent Mary Queen of Scots movie. On her return to Scotland in 1560 she'd spent her entire life in the Royal Court in France where she'd married the Dauphin. Anything produced for film or television is very rarely historically accurate.

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: Allan Conn
Date: 30 May 19 - 01:56 PM

I am not sure what kind of accent you think Bruce should be shown with then? A modern Essex accent perhaps? And why just Bruce - what about King Edward?? Obviously the Scots are shown with Scottish accents and the English with English accents just to make it easy for modern audiences. Why bother about how lead characters are speaking when surely the main thing is how all the characters are shown!! In Bruce's time many of the Scots would have spoken Older Scots and/or Gaelic and not modern English with Scottish accents. Bruce himself yes was Anglo-Norman on his paternal side but on his maternal side he was of Gaelic extraction. Likewise in Mary's time. Mary yes she would have spoken mainly French but when she was in Scotland among her subjects she would have spoken her 16thC Scots just like her son James VI did and her father James V did and the other Scots who weren't speaking Gaelic did. She probably would have sounded quite strange especially to English ears if she spoke in her Scots with a heavy French accent. She suggested herself how difficult it was for Scots and English speakers to communicate at first until they got used to the differences. She tried in 1581 to procure Jesuit priests to attempt to convert James back to Catholicism, and was dismayed when two English priests were chosen to go to the Royal Court in Edinburgh,complaining that as well as the animosity between the peoples the two were "foreigners who could do not much good as they would not understand the language" So unless one wants truly authentic 14thC or 16thC dialogue for all the characters, with the subtitles that would probably entail, then it seems sensible that they'd be given modern Scottish and English accents to differentiate them in the viewers eyes!

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: GUEST
Date: 31 May 19 - 12:15 PM

Bruce and Edward would have spoken a dialect of French now known as Anglo-Norman French, which was, to a large extent, the spoken language of the higher social strata in medieval times in Britain. As such Anglo-Norman French was commonly used for literary and eventually administrative purposes from the 12th until the 15th century. Therefore it really does not matter what accents are used to portray these characters in films, and even more idiotic for anybody to criticise foreign actors attempting Scottish, or whatever accent (Thinking here of Mel Gibson in Braveheart). Irrelevant what the Scots of the time spoke as Bruce wasn't a Scot.

As you yourself point out Mary Queen of Scots was of the 16th Century, therefore from a period where "English" was the primary language of mainland Britain. She left Scotland when she was five years old and lived in the French Royal Court where she most definitely would have spoken French and while in France she was taught Italian, Latin and Greek. She had four Scots companions to whom she would have spoken Scots. Her son James, who became James VI, never left the British Isles and as far as I am aware neither did Mary's Father James V.

Rather liked this though Alan, it did make me chuckle:

.... it seems sensible that they'd be given modern Scottish and English accents to differentiate them in the viewers eyes!

I'd have thought their names alone would have been good enough for their ears as a means of differentiation.

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 31 May 19 - 02:18 PM

I watched it again and was quite happy with the accents. They make sense to the modern ear if not to the historian and the producers need to work out which market to appeal to. Let me see, a tiny number of historians and pendants who may care about these things or the vast majority of the population. Mmmmm. Tough one :-D

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 31 May 19 - 03:31 PM

I started this thread curious about what mudcatters had to say about the soundtrack music...

We'll get there eventually...

btw.. don't recall too many kilts in this movie...???

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jun 19 - 09:10 AM

couldn't we have these Caledonian chappies speaking in their own
tongue(s) but with subtitles for those of the Southern persuasion, most of whom think England ends at the River Trent?

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 01 Jun 19 - 10:24 AM

That was an important point of "Black 47"..

The refusal to speak English as an act of defiance against English oppressors..

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: Allan Conn
Date: 02 Jun 19 - 04:33 AM

Bruce and King Edward would have spoken Norman French when speaking to each other but it is generally considered that the likes of Bruce and Wallace were not monolingual. Bruce was seemingly also at least a Gaelic speaker too - and Gaelic and Scots were the dominant spoken languages in Scotland at that time. Written communication in Scotland at that time was in both Latin and Norman-French so both those were in use. The Gaelic language predominated in the Highlands and part of the Lowlands north of the Tay plus in the western Southern Uplands. Professor A.A.M Duncan in his "Scotland The Making Of A Kingdom" yes concedes that Norman French was used by the Anglo-Normans but also states that "it seems generally agreed that from the borders of Galloway to the Mounth and east of the Highland Line the landowning class from laird to earl, spoke Scots, a version of northern English, by the late 13thC" In Galloway itself, which at that time included the Bruce's Earldom of Carrick, Prof Duncan goes on to state the dominance of Gaelic in the mid 13thC among the ruling elite is evidenced by the charters of Duncan, Earl of Carrick.

Which brings us to the idea of Bruce not being Scottish. We all know he was part Anglo-Norman and that his family owned land both in Scotland and England and that the family had a history of swerving allegiances - but he was also through his mother descended from said Duncan mentioned above and the native Gaelic population as well as of course the other Scottish links re the Royal household etc. Yes he was an Anglo-Norman but he also had a foot in the Scottish and the Gaelic world. The historian Fiona Watson was frustrated at the way the UK media jumped on her point that Bruce was probably born on his family's Essex estate and that this made him English and not Scottish. She did not assert that at all and regards that as more an accident of birth and suggests his upbringing and experience were more relevant than his place of birth. Little is known about Bruce's actual upbringing but Watson asserts that as was the tradition in Gaelic Scotland at that time he was fostered to another family. His younger brother Edward seemingly to the O'Neil's in Ulster but she believes the evidence suggests Bruce more likely spent 7 years in a Hebridean household possibly the MacDonalds of Islay as stated in her new bio on Bruce by Watson "Traitor Outlaw King Part 1". This is a cut and paste from her own website

"This seems to me rather more important when it comes to understanding the future king than his Essex connections, which don’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about the way he was brought up. But learning Gaelic and absorbing the rather different culture – up to and including the way to wage war – of the Irish Sea world surely made a considerable difference to young Robert’s outlook."

So considering that to be authentic the film would need to show Bruce speaking two, possibly more than two, languages - plus the Scots in general would need to be speaking Gaelic or early Scots - then it is going to need to be a subtitled film which does not suit everyone's taste. If Bruce is shown as speaking English dialogue then an American accent or English accent doesn't make any more sense than a Scottish accent which most folk I imagine can relate to him having in the film.

As to in Mary's time and the idea of English being the language of most of mainland Britain. I don't see the relevance in that statement. Mary was Queen of Scots not Queen of Most Of Mainland Britain, and the primary languages in Scotland in that time were Scots (the Scottish form of English) and Gaelic. Scots was the language of law and the language of the Royal Court. What was spoken elsewhere in mainland Britain isn't really that relevant. She would have spoken to her subjects and nobles in her own Scots. We don't really know how heavy a French accent her Scots would have had. Again if you want the dialogue to be authentic then yes the actors could all have learned to speak in 16thC Scots and some in Gaelic - and the lead actress playing Mary, when not speaking French, could have given her 16thC Scots a bit of a French accent. It would again for an international audience be subtitled. Didn't it just make much more sense just to have modern Scottish accents to show they were Scottish characters??

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 02 Jun 19 - 08:24 AM

I watched Black 47 last night, PFR. Good film. In my opinion.

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 02 Jun 19 - 10:10 AM

It's interstiong that the lead actor of "Black 47" is an Aussie who had to learn a crash course in Irish...

As if Ireland doesn't have any big charismatic brooding actors who can already speak it...???

I could understand an Aussie or Yank big name star being attached to get the financing to make the movie,
but this Aussis is basically unknow to us audiences over here...

Whatever, he had great brooding brutal presence in this movie, so no complaints from me..

Not that I'm a good judge of how convincingly well he spoke Irish though...???

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 02 Jun 19 - 10:31 AM

I thought Weaving's character was supposed to be British. In the wiki write up

Hannah (Weaving) is a veteran of the British army who is working as an investigator for the Royal Irish Constabulary.

Sounded like a south-east accent to me which Aussies seem to manage ok.

Part of what made the film so good, for me, was the interplay between the two erstwhile brothers in arms now on opposite sides.

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 02 Jun 19 - 10:53 AM

For the first few minutes I had more doubts about Weaver's English accent,
but got used to it as I became engrossed in the movie...

Afterwards, I did a google on him..
turns out he was actually born in Africa to Engilsh parents
before becoming better known as an Aussie...

A bit like Mel Gibson actually being born a yank...

Or Bobby the Bruce, an Essex boy...

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 02 Jun 19 - 10:57 AM

I'll just add - a good companion piece to the relationship betwen the 2 Army comrades,
is Kipling's Barrack Room ballads..

Well, at least I think so...

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 02 Jun 19 - 11:05 AM

They mentioned Kabul a lot so "Ford o'Kabul river" would go :-)

Subject: RE: Review: Bloodthirsty & lusty Scots musical movie
From: Allan Conn
Date: 02 Jun 19 - 04:34 PM

We went to see "Wild Rose" the other week. About a Glaswegian country singer who wants to get to Nashville. Lead role was played by an Irish actress who I thought did a great job with the accent.