Seventh Sword: Avenging The Throne DVD Review

Director: Raymond Mizzi

Cast: Andrei Claude, Joseph Calleja

Certificate: 18

Running Time: 90 Minutes

You won’t have heard of this film before – so under the radar is SEVENTH SWORD that it doesn’t even exist on IMDB. Well it does, but under a different name – ADORMIDERA; normally film name changes are acknowledged on the site, but not this one.

I understand that SEVENTH SWORD is a Maltese film, but the production values are shockingly bad. The whole point of a film is that it looks like a film, the sets, costume and make-up should draw you into the world it constructs. However, the team behind SEVENTH SWORD appear to have forgotten this, leaving the viewer very conscious that they are just watching a film. It’s almost like watching a recording of a cheap stage-play; it even comes complete with (what looks like) hired medieval costumes and red face paint smeared on faces to look like blood.  The overuse of close-ups, obviously employed to hide the set – or lack thereof, is infuriating given the cheap make-up; it makes the images disjointed from their surroundings within the first fifteen minutes and feels like a film about floating heads.

All of the aforementioned elements detract the viewer from being able to engage with what is unfolding on screen. Well that, and the fact that nothing is actually happening on screen. Seriously absolutely nothing seems to happen during the ninety minute run time. Two men survive ‘an epic battle’ (which of course has taken place off screen, nor is its purpose explained) and head home. Along the way they meet another three men who join them. A day away from their final destination they decide to stop in on their Lord who has a dislike for poppies that never really seems to be explained. One member falls in love with a women who he sees from a distance and eventually, for some quite unclear reason, they fight with the Lord. As well as being a terrible jumble of non-story the dialogue is clunky, basic and too-modern for a film set in the past.

The score is completely at odds with events occurring on screen, there is an overuse of loud dramatic music whilst on screen nothing dramatic is happening. It’s almost like the composer was given a different film to make music for – that, or during the edit it was deemed necessary to utilise the music to imply more story than there is.

For some reason it has also been granted an 18 certificate yet I’ve seen more violent PG’s – remember the guy who loses his head in JURASSIC PARK? Much more grizzly that anything in the film. You watch an 18 in this day and age, you expect either a lot of blood (which given the film is meant to be about battle you’d expect), a lot of nudity (there are sex scenes but TITANIC is more explicit), or a lot of swearing (I don’t think I counted a single one).

Described in the blurb as being for fans of THE LORD OF THE RINGS and Game of Thrones, SEVENTH SWORD: AVENGING THE THRONE fails miserably to emulate either. The result a cheap looking, shoddily made film devoid of plot and pace.

[usr=1] SEVENTH SWORD: AVENGING THE THRONE is released to buy from Monday 26th January.