, led by an exceptionally fine Anthony Hopkins. Netflix continues that wave of highly watchable Shakespeare retellings with, which is as much a reinterpretation as a distillation in the intelligent screenplay by Michôd and one of his stars, Joel Edgerton.
The performances also are deserving of the full big-screen impact, led by a characteristically whip-smart Timothée Chalamet as Henry V, forced to transform himself overnight from a "whoring fool," carousing in the lower-class tavern of London's Eastcheap quarter, into a reluctant monarch.
If Falstaff and Hal both are skeptical of war, the opposite is true of impetuous young Hotspur , who opens the movie on a battlefield strewn with corpses, sharing a few cruel words with a dying rebel Scotsman before calmly plunging in his sword to finish him off.
The big fight of course is the Battle of Agincourt, where Hal's troops are vastly outnumbered by the French, led by the Dauphin , son of King Charles VI. Pattinson previously worked with Michôd in his post-apocalyptic Australian Western,, and his casting here at first is a distraction. He speaks heavily French-accented English to better taunt Henry — "I enjoy to speak English. It is simple and ugly." — and tosses his lank hair like a foppish Kurt Cobain.
This is especially true in the detailed account of England's fight strategy, when the military experience of the Earl of Dorset says retreat, but Falstaff says they can win, his plan amusingly based on an aching knee that tells him to expect rain that night. What's really notable about the war scenes though is the sobriety of the victories. There are no shouts of triumph, only the stricken faces of those surveying the dead.
Pass.
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