Attila

USA network blurbs state Men Followed. Women Worshipped. Rome Trembled.

And Audiences Giggle.

Cross Lord of the Rings with a bodice-ripper romance and mix in a little Gladiator and you have this two-part movie starring hunky Scot Gerard Butler as the marauding king of the Scythian hordes known as the Huns. The Romans called him the Scourge of God, and the real Attila brought Europe to its knees, but Attila in this movie is played by Butler as a tormented man with a sexy overbite and some family dysfunction. There is intrigue and bloodwash aplenty. The Huns are depicted as a rather Celtic, not Asian, tribe, complete with wood sprite who delivers prophecies to Attila, King-Arthur style. These involve a gaining ownership of a sword, with which one rules the world. Okaaaay....

Decent, albeit comic, performances are given as Romans by Tim Curry and some other guy as emperor of Rome about this time frame (the year 452 or thereabouts). Powers Boothe is Roman General Flavius Aetius who alternately conspires with and against Attila. The emperor's sister, a hot-looking Roman princess in a corsety-type thing I am pretty sure did not exist in that timeframe, seduces Attila in a bath, even though he's supposed to be in love with the red haired woman his tribe captured from a village. Men never change. Alice Krige as the emperor's mother is much prettier here than she was as the Borg Queen in Star Trek but she's bitchy and conspires against everybody, even her own children.

Gerard Butler makes a sexy Attila, and he can invade my village anytime. However, he's Scottish, and seems to be affecting some kind of weird accent here, where syllables fall out of his mouth in an oddly non-commanding warrior way. Fearsome Attila gets his comeuppance on his wedding night, all right, but not in the historically accurate way. But USA's way is much more romantic and candle-lit. Complete with mighty Attila wearing a diaper configuration.

Alas, history lovers will find no great interest here. However, if you are in the mood for swashbuckling in the Braveheart mode and eye-candy in the form of Mr. Butler, this is the movie for you!

Attila is a very good movie that brings to life the director's version of how he would have liked Attila the Hun's story to have been. The movie does not faithfully follow the original sources on Attila the Hun, rather it is INSPIRED by these, and therefore has a great deal of flaws and deviations from the real accounts. One could list one after another the discrepancies that occur, and for those that have read/studied History, you know the list would be very long indeed, some will say too long... From this very long list the most important alteration of course was when dealing with Attila himself, who is portrayed as "really nice guy" who is "determined" to have his way, when in actual fact he was one of the most brutal/lethal people to have existed (what so many tend to call a "butcher" and a "tyrant" these days...). Even though this is Hollywood and one should be more flexible and lenient when dealing with adaptations, one should also keep in mind that one must never do so at the expense of accuracy i.e. the truth. Why? Because Attila was a REAL person and a very important historical figure and not part of some modern twentieth century novel! Therefore, the only real problem arises when the majority of people (and most people have NOT read the actual sources) who see the movie start believing that events happened the way the movie depicts/portrays and not the way they actually did. Consequently, due to this distortion, the movie poses a very serious danger of producing armies of misinformed people who think they know Attila's history when they really do not. Not good!
On the positive side, the movie does succeed in transporting the viewer back in time when the Roman Empire had recently been divided into Eastern and Western parts, following Emperor Theodosius's death in 395 AD and the subsequent division of the Empire between his two sons: Arcadius and Honorius.
The film does a great job of presenting these times and therefore providing a very accurate and thus, contradicting Decadent West (Rome) compared to the Pious East (Constantinople).
The movie is action packed, the acting is very good and the cast are wonderful. The actors' performances are outstanding, especially Tim Curry playing the Byzantine Emperor, steals the show, but also the rest of the actors who have done a superb job of providing an entertaining film that can be watched over and over again. Hopefully, more movies will be made set in the ancient times, as the demand for them is definitely there. And hopefully they will be historically accurate as well!
In short, it is my belief that the movie deserves 4 stars for the top quality and entertainment it provides, but falls short of 5 stars for deviating so much from the original and creating a sense of confusion among viewers.

Such a great movie! After this movie, I read a lot about Huns and Attila. Gerard Butler played the King of Huns very successfully. The movie also presents the nice portrait of Attila, much nicer than the roman historians wrote about him and pagans. Attila was named as a barbarian but he was one of the great leaders in the history and also a very smart king who brought the west Roman empire to end. One thing about Gerard; if he was looking a little bit Eurasian on his facial features like a Turkic man, he would be looking like a real Attila but however still his skin complexion, beard and moustache, long brown hair, his tall and strong muscular body reflected the Huns. West Huns were of mostly Turkic origin mixed later with North and Mid Europeans. Attila was adored by the people that he led, loved by women but became a victim of his Roman enemies who used his new wife to poison him. Attila in the reality, respected the Roman civilization but hated the dishonest society and conspiracies of Romans. That was one of the reasons that he did not destroy city of Rome because of his respect to the civilization. (Shouldn't be called a barbarian because a barbarian would destroy Rome). Also the movie needed much better crowd in the battle scenes as the battles happened between 100-400K soldiers. But we shouldn't expect a movie to fully reflect the facts in the history. To my conclusion, it was a very touchy movie!