Wife of Prasutag, Tigern of the British Iceni The original title of the joint British-Romanian film is Boudica. It was chosen in honor of the main character of the picture - the wife of the leader of the British tribe Iceni, who lived in 1 AD. In the future, her name had several interpretations, for example, Boadice or Budica, but, in the end, it is officially accepted to call her Boudica with emphasis on the first syllable.
Agree with the fact that the name of this historical figure is not known to everyone, except that historians, and all sorts of intellectuals, so our distributors acted competently when they gave their own name to the film, deviating from the original. So the film directed by Bill Anderson and screenwriter Andrew Davis became known to us as the "Warrior Queen", it is more spectacular and sonorous. It is possible even in this way to collect a certain part of the audience, especially the brethren who do not believe in the existence of cinema without such a subgenre as “peplum”, that is, historical-battle cinema with some deviations from the facts, in order to give such a movie great effect. All to the delight of the audience!
Indeed, if you at least superficially familiarize yourself with the history of Boudicca’s life, it instantly becomes clear that she could form the basis of the plot of a grandiose peplum. Not only would Stanley Kubrick rejoice at the opportunity to make a film based on the time of the militant Boudicca, but Mel Gibson, Ridley Scott and Wolfgang Petersen would take it. But there are a few things: these directors had and have talent, then they have status and authority and as a result – the opportunity to attract the attention of the largest and richest film studios in the world. Bill Anderson did not have such an opportunity a priori: “Warrior Queen” clearly did not suffer from excess funding, which eventually led to the release of a rather mediocre film.
And Bill Anderson himself could not boast of the experience of a full meter, in his track record there were only TV series (among them, however, “Doctor Who”) and several television projects, that is, Bill Anderson completely belonged to television. In such cases, one can rarely expect an unexpected “shot” when the director puts something on track. I must say that in general, the "Queen of Warriors" from and to looks exactly like a television film and has nothing to do with art cinema. Boring scenery, lack of scope in battle scenes (agree that for peplum this is an extremely important point), pretty cut drama, a lot of missed nuances in the characters, which made them look uninquisitive, and selective fragments from the life of Boudicca for the plot. All this suggests only that the delight of watching “Queen of warriors” does not radiate.
It’s a shame, even in his own way, that a screenwriter like Andrew Davis, who worked on adapting the first two books to the film adaptation of the Bridget Jones story, could not identify the right platform for Warrior Queen. Although I could, but then his script decently cut, leaving only those parts that could be removed due to lack of proper budget. Of course, there are a couple of scenes that look good, there is even one that is directly frightening and terrifying because of the behavior of Roman soldiers, with whom Boudicca fought an unequal struggle, but they are clearly not enough to make the film more or less attractive. The acting was not particularly expressive either. The actress Alex Kingston (once the wife of Rafe Fiennes) was diligent, but she failed to fully reveal the character, and in principle this was expected. One joy: “Warrior Queen” was the first film for the now world-famous Emily Blunt, who played Isolde, one of Boudicca’s daughters.
And in conclusion, I would just like to say that if someone does take on a more materially qualitative production of Boudicca’s life story, it will be an expected film, because the life of this outstanding brave woman deserves it.
4 out of 10