Ironclad

Ironclad is as weighed-down as it sounds.

As a critic who complains about painless and brainless action movies, I hoist a glass of mead to the men and maidens of "Ironclad."

The loud, closely photographed limb-hacking becomes as monotonous as the movie's unrelentingly gray palette.

A gore-filled guilty pleasure...

The core fan base of this English sword battle drama will pay for the boundary-pushing blood and gore. Why bore them with things like plot and context and production values?

The action is cluttered and the story overly compressed, with a lot of yammering about who's aligned with whom and why (no wonder Mr. Giamatti's eyes keep rolling) in between the geysers of red.

Terrific action spectacle and a great tattered and beaten performance from Paul Giamatti, but the film is largely lifeless and dull.

Most of the movie is so bland and has such a lack of passion for characters or story that it makes you wonder why anyone cared enough to make it.

James Purefoy's Marshal is still bound by his Templar oaths, but will he be able to preserve his vow of chastity when Kate Mara's lady of the castle starts fondling his great big Templar sword?

What saves the flick is Paul Giamatti's John, played as a petulant, damaged man born in a world where he wields the power of a god and inevitably rages as that power is snatched away.