Medieval road trip

- a priest and a Teutonic knight sketch the route to a mysterious monastery

This week's movie rental was Season of the Witch, a 2011 fantasy film shot in Europe, directed by Dominic Sena (Kalifornia), and starring Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, and Ulrich Thomsen (Adam's Apples)

Set in the 14th century, Teutonic knights (the bad guys of Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky), Behmen of Bleibruck (Cage) and Felson (Perlman), desert from the Smyrniote crusades after being ordered to kill unarmed women and children. They return to their own country, Germany, which they find ravaged by the Black Death, and they're captured as deserters. They are asked by a plague-infected Cardinal to escort an alleged witch, who he believes caused the plague, to a remote monastery where the monks will nullify her powers with the spell from a book called the Clavis Salomonis (this one?). They agree on condition that the girl gets a fair trial and that they are pardoned. The two Crusaders, a young priest, a knight (Thomsen), a criminal who knows the route, and an altar boy who wants to be a knight set off with the caged witch. Adventures follow.

I wish I could say the film was good, but it was a sword and sorcery version of a poor man's The Seventh Seal. I like Nicolas Cage so I found it sort of watch-able, but Roger Ebert gave it just 2 out of 4 stars in his review. Here's the trailer ...