Medieval

Petr Jákl practically confessed his love for Braveheart in every interview. And that's exactly the kind of film he made, an origin story of Jan Zizka for foreign audiences. From the whole cultural phenomenon, he chose the myth of birth and supported it with great names. Among many foreign actors that Jákl managed to work with, I would especially highlight Til Schweiger, who is exactly the star that has enough appeal to the audience and at the same time is not at all foreign to our cultural environment. That's why his Rosenberg is a feast for the eyes and at the same time the most interesting supporting character. As a whole, the film works, and it has a lot to offer. (11/19/2022)

When I came out of the cinema, I was so resigned. I wanted for Jan Žižka to be a good film, and I wished it for myself. But two days passed and the situation changed a bit. Well, enough. I don't really know what to praise about Petr Jákl's latest film, but I also can't say I suffered with it. Overall, it's "just" not very good. Honestly, the twenty-three million dollar budget doesn't show in the result, but that's the least of the problems. The bigger problem is the awfully cluttered fight scenes, but the worst by far is the actual presentation of the story. Sod historical accuracy, whether the armor is period appropriate, that sort of thing. Of course, the fact that Žižka is a woefully flat character with no working motivation and Ben Foster spends most of the time floundering is already a problem. As is the entire second half, which consists more or less of running around the woods, swapping prisoners and looking for someone who just hid somewhere. I can only praise Roland Møller's villain, but the rest is mediocre at best, lacking directorial ideas, an interesting story and anything else that would be worth paying attention to. A Czech big movie of Hollywood standards this is certainly not. (09/07/2022)

Forget the clichéd portrayal of the Middle Ages and the historical inaccuracies that abound also in Braveheart, Robin Hood, Kingdom of Heaven and the like, I have another problem: what is Jan Žižka really about? What’s its idea? I got lost in the intrigue of "who, with whom and why", I was bored by the second third of the film, which dragged on enormously without much happening in it, and I wasn't very interested in Žižka's emergence, because there was hardly any of it. Žižka was almost always the same Žižka from the beginning to the end, the routine script didn't provide any big surprises. However, what Petr Jákl the (co)screenwriter failed to do, Petr Jákl the director masked quite skillfully, but also in no revelatory way (the battles, or rather skirmishes, are desperately muddled and sometimes look ridiculous, but for example the scene with the lion is really great), and above all Petr Jákl the producer, who managed to get really, really, really good actors, led by a fine Ben Foster and including Michael Caine, who I never thought I would see in a Czech film, let alone Jan Žižka. In spite of all the criticisms, I have to wish the film success, because it is a revelation in domestic filmmaking in a good sense (I don't want to write like a one-eyed man among the blind), and I would like it to show that Czechs can produce something other than romantic comedies and communist dramas. However, if anyone in our country has managed to make a great film of world quality in recent years, it was Václav Marhoul (and he actually made two). (09/09/2022)

After years of promises and media hype, it's here! And within five minutes of watching it, everyone would rather just forget about it. I suppose nobody had much expectations, but I was hoping for at least an enjoyable portion of filmmaking. What I got instead was a grinding grey amateurish borefest, full of the most tedious pathos and jaded actors' faces. Aside from the endless hunt for the macguffin that is the female lead, and a throwaway shot of a three-way that the ruler wants to scheme on, the script offers nothing but a hodgepodge of the most hackneyed movie clichés you can imagine. There’s no characterisation of characters, there are no interesting dialogues, there’s no clear storytelling, there’s no dramaturgy, there’s no pace. Jan Žižka represents the purest grey you could get from the most expensive Czech production. (09/08/2022)

The fact that Jan Žižka doesn't come across as unintentionally funny at any point, as I was a little afraid it would, can be considered a small victory. Production-wise, the film is solid, but it fundamentally fails in its narrative. I just couldn't get into the story. It's opaque both at the level of the dramatic arc of political scheming and at the level of individual scenes, where it would help to understand the who and the where, but we can’t. What works well, though, are the brutality sequences. It could have been a solid 80-minute dirty medieval carnage, but when there were ambitions for a bigger Hollywood movie, alas. By the way, I don't really understand why someone makes a film called Jan Žižka and choose a period in Žižka's life that nobody knows anything about, so the plot is completely fabricated. I'm not criticizing it in the sense that I'm projecting it into my rating, I just don't get it. (10/17/2022)