Black Death (Christopher Smith, 2010)

Northern Germany comfortably stands in for a plague-ravaged medieval England as a band of mercenaries on a church-sanctioned mission to capture a necromancer draft in a young monk to guide them. When they finally reach the village of their prey, they find an untouched idyll. Nothing, of course, is as it first seems.
Black Death is a curious mix of trash and high concept. On one hand, Sean Bean as the mercenary leader seems to have taken his Boromir get-up off the rail gritting his teeth, the dialogue frequently grates even when it's not being wilfully anachronistic and a lingering air of Blackadder is only reinforced when Tim McInnerny turns up. On the other, there's actually some kind of thought process going on in the conflict between the bloodthirsty Christian crusaders and haughty village pagans, with the young monk struggling with his faith in between the two. Overall, still a failure, but a qualified one.

4/10