"Ironclad"

The biggest problems you're going to run into with doing a period piece (especially when it's a medieval war movie) has to be budget and, related very much to budget, scale. The biggest problem with "Ironclad" is budget and, related very much to budget, scale. When your large fight sequences have 20 guys on screen when you're supposed to have an entire army with you, it tends to leave much to be desired. I'm pretty sure the same three guys lifted the same ladder 27 times in 88 different shots to create the illusion. Unfortunately it failed. With the small budget that was, they tried to create beyond that a larger scale and was unsuccessful. Another problem with this movie was the story. Toss aside the stereotypical nature, but why is it that this moral and righteous Templar Knight is perfect in every sense until a pair of medieval bosoms attached to a pretty face flash before him and his chain-mail  comes flying off faster than that guy-with-a-wooden-eye-in-"Pirates of the Caribbean"-but-doesn't-have-a-wooden-eye-in-this-movie-because-he's-not-a-pirate's arrow shoots from his bow. It's just ridiculous, more so than the comparison I just made in the last sentence. My third and final complaint was that the dialogue was filled with all these one-liners that were meant to be smart, witty, funny, powerful, riveting, thought provoking, and/or moralistic. Instead they fell painfully flat. You watch this movie and it has a lot of recognizable faces (is it Hollywood law that Brian Cox or Brian Gleeson must be in any and every medieval movie these days?), but they all are over-dramatic, even Paul Giamatti who I think is fantastic. Just not in this. It's always disappointing when you weren't expecting much and even then the film fails to live up to those limited expectations.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1233301/