'Warrior Queen' puts up an unconvincing fight
When Alex Kingston first appears as Boudica in "Warrior Queen," she's screaming a victory "hooo" at the top of her lungs. There's a bit of frat-boy-at-a-football-game enthusiasm to her yell, which is infectious, but also strange. After all, she's supposed to be among a mass of fighting troops in the first century AD, not at a bonfire rally before a gang of really psyched players.
And that's the kind of unconvincing and sometimes amateurish atmosphere that dogs this installment of "Masterpiece Theatre," which airs tomorrow at 9 p.m. on Channel 2. The movie is about the legendary Boudica, who leads a rebellion of British tribes against the Roman army's imperial oppression. But it rarely succeeds in evoking its rough, earthy time period or the scope and intensity of the battle that Boudica led. At points, it looks more like tattooed punks playing a game of paintball in the woods.
Part of the problem is the script, which was written by the usually amazing Andrew Davies, whose TV work includes "Middlemarch" and "The Way We Live Now." The dialogue is too modern for its setting, with its overarticulate British peasants and a small clique of Roman leaders who speak in the manner of the British upper crust. Almost parodic, Nero is a simpering idiot who looks as if he were plucked from a 1950s movie, and the stuttering Claudius is a therapy-minded fellow who wants peace. "I really do want us to be friends," he says to Boudica. Davies has also failed to knit a tight plot for the whereabouts of the Romans and Nero's twisted relationship with his mother.
A low-budget look also haunts the production. At some points, there don't appear to be enough extras, particularly among Boudica's troops. At those moments, the Brits are more like a not-so-merry band of rabble-rousers than a forceful entity fighting for their homeland. Likewise, the costumes are awkwardly un-epic, in a sort of "Cats"-meets-"Braveheart" way.
Kingston, who plays Dr. Corday on "ER," has a few nice moments. The movie's best scene is its hardest scene, when Boudica is tied up and flogged while forced to watch her daughters get raped. As she rises, urging herself and her daughters on with "Get up" and "No tears," it is as powerful as the rest of the movie is unremarkable.
Warrior Queen
Starring: Alex Kingston, Jack Shepherd, Steven Waddingtonall cq/jf
On: PBS, Channel 2
Time: Sunday tomorrow night, 9-10:30
Rating: TVPG
