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Far to the north a spirited warrior grows up in the lands
of the Huns, a nomadic race that has set it's sights on conquering
Europe. Called Attila (Gerard Butler), the young man is a
good war leader who is locked in a rivalry for the Hun kingship
with his brother.
On one raid he grabs a red-haired woman called N'Kara (Simmone
Jade MacKinnon), falls in love with her only to have his older
brother pick her as a wife.
When Aetius arrives to ask for an alliance against the also-Rome-threatening
Visigoths, Attila joins forces with the empire and begins
to campaign with him to learn Roman ways.
Without going into all the ins and outs of this almost three-hour
telemovie on Attila's rise to power, it covers Rome crafty
sneaky ways, the struggle for world domination, some okay
battlescenes and some lovely female love interests.
It is a pretty sanitised version of the Hun king. You wouldn't
know from Attila the Hun that the conqueror didn't
mind lopping a few thousand heads off the enemy at one sitting,
was unlikely to have fallen into a lifelong love with a captured
beauty or, in fact, murdered his brother for the crown. Anyway,
Butler looks clean-living enough to counter the bad press
Attila got.
Mind you, the main characters are not bad historically. They
existed and the basic storyline of Attila the Hun is pretty
much true to the facts.
Valentinian was weak willed and treacherous, his mother was
a political viper, Aetius was Rome's strongman and held the
empire together for far longer than should have been expected,
the emperor's sister tried for a pact with the Huns and Attila
didn't have a very good time of his last wedding night.
However, this movie is too long and could easily have been
edited down by an hour without losing anything.
The acting is a tad wooden and while the battle scenes are
not bad, they are seriously undermanned. It is hard to envisage
the massive battles of the age through the couple of hundred
extras used in Attila the Hun. The clashes also lack
a lot in the blood-spilling department, with the production
smacking of B-grade Sunday arvo production.
The video transfer is very good with nothing major in the
way of visual irritants and the sound is fine, albeit in stereo.
Attila the Hun has a good cast, excellent photography
but needed a first-class editor to snip it into shape.
Conclusion: Movie 70%, Extras 30%
Continued:
DVD details at a glance >
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