Movie Review: Action Olga is “Boudica: Queen of War”

Boudica, the wronged-woman turned warrior queen heroine of Roman era British history, has been featured in lots of movies over the decades, pretty much all of them B-pictures.

“Boudica: Queen of War” doesn’t break that curse. But as B-movies go, this just-stylish-enough Roman-gutting Olga Kurylenko star vehicle is the most fun of the lot.

Writer-director Jesse V. Johnson — “Hell Hath No Fury” was his — bathes his action scenes in the literal fog of pre-history. Kurylenko, the Ukrainian model whose turn as a “Bond Babe” 15 years ago led to a lucrative career in modest-budget action pictures, handles fight choreography well enough that one isn’t allowed to dwell on the dainty throw weight the willowy runway-ready brings to a fight.

Well, she IS Ukrainian.

And her reaction to this Roman outrage or that Roman garrison awaiting her vengeance is downright quotable, in impolite company.

“F–K them!”

Before she was labeled “Boudica” (Victorious Queen) she was the First Century wife of the king of the Iceni tribe (Clive Standen), doting mother of twin tween girls (Litiana and Lilibet Biutanaseva, who have worked with Kurylenko before and it shows), resigned to paying tribute to the occupying Italians, but not thrilled about it.

When her husband is killed, she signs over half her kingdom to the Roman procurator (Nick Moran, terrific), whose name is given a Monty Pythonesque pronunciation here — Catus Decianus.

But he barks about the rules of Roman patriarchy and the “insult” of her female-in-power status, takes her kingdom, has her stripped, flogged and branded in the face, her girls (history tells us) raped.

She recovers with the help of fierce Celtic woman warrior Cartimanda (Lucy Martin), who was the first to call her “Boudica” as the embodiment of a Druid prophecy, the one who would “free” her people.

Boudica’s fury accompanies training with a bronze sword — mocked in this Iron Age world — she inherits, which appears to have magical powers. She wins over other tribes led by warriors like Wolfgar (Peter Franzén), drops a few Celtic f-bombs about the Romans, and there is hell to pay in this corner of the empire mismanaged by the fey, decadent emperor Nero, a loinclothed hedonist given a Chalamet softness by Harry Kirton.

Yes, there are elements and moments that we’re pretty much invited to laugh at here. But much of the history (three Roman historians wrote about Boudica, Tacitus the most famous) checks out. The supernatural sequences have a Joan of Arc edge. I like the foggy almost “300” netherworld Johnson creates for the action scenes and the way the script connects mother with her daughters.

It’s a B-movie, not “Killers of the Flower Moon,” even if it is somewhat better looking than that overlong streaming epic.

And Martin, Moran and our leading lady bring fair value to a picture that struggles to be respectful but never wholly escapes camp.

Rating: R, bloody violence, Celtic F-bombs

Cast: Olga Kurylenko, Clive Standen, Peter Franzén, Nick Moran, Leo Gregory, Rita Tushingham and Lucy Martin

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jesse V. Johnson. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:41

About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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