19) Arn: The Knight Templar (2007)
The most expensive production in the history of Swedish cinema, Arn: The Knight Templar has an odd origin story: the original 2007 film and its 2008 sequel, Arn: The Kingdom at Road’s End, were cut together into one movie for it’s American DVD release in 2010. The epic project boasts a stellar international cast, including Stellan Skarsgard, Michael Nyqvist and Bibi Andersson, one of Ingmar Berman’s favorites.
The epic film is based on a book trilogy about a fictional mid-12th century Swedish Knight Templar named Arn Magnusson. Raised in a convent but trained to be a soldier of God, Arn returns to his powerful family as factions form within the nobility’s battle for the throne. Arn is excommunicated and sent to fight as a Knight Templar in the Crusades.
Critic Gwladys Fouche of The Guardian writes that the casting threatens to turn the Arn project into “Euro-pudding,” but “the plot is exciting, the acting is convincing, the locations beautiful and you don’t get bored for a second.” She notes that historical inaccuracy concerning the Crusades is a problem, as “Arn is trying to make a hero out of someone [a religious zealot] who wasn’t.”
There is no Arn reviewer score on Rotten Tomatoes, but it has an audience score of 61%. Most of the small reviews I could find were quite mixed. For a Game of Thrones fan, its got knights, war, political intrigue, love affairs and big battle set pieces. What’s not to like?