Review of There Be Dragons (2011) by James C — 18 Feb 2012

Another example of great talent gone to waste. Granted, writer/director Roland Joffe hasn't made a good film in over 20 years, so one shouldn't expect too much here. He does have some great actors and the technical aspects of the film are all top notch, but the script is a mess and the film is really dull.

This story of a journalist researching controversial founder of Opus Dei, Josemaria Escriva who finds out his estranged father his childhood friend has so many narrative problems that it just weighs the whole thing down.

And hiring British & American actors for Spanish roles just makes it worse. That said, at least there are some bright moments for Jordi Molla, Charles Dance, Geraldine Chaplin and Derek Jacobi. Charlie Cox, as Escriva, is decent enough but Wes Bentley is completely miscast and buried under some really bad old age make up in the framing story set in 1982.

Historically, I don't know enough about this period of Spanish history or the role that the Catholic Church played, but from the other reviews I have read, apparently a lot of this is white washed and/or wrong.

The version I saw on DVD has the original score by Stephen Warbeck, but apparently the U.S. theatrical version was rescored by Robert Folk. The DVD features an interview with Wes Bentley where he talks about fighting his demons to get sober (which was an odd addition) and over 30 minutes of deleted/extended scenes which mostly feature the wonderful work of the supporting actors Molla, Chaplin and Jacobi.