Flesh + Blood

1501, Italy. A band of mercenaries is betrayed by the lord they serve and sets out for revenge. Along the way they abduct a noble bride. Her position keeps sliding between captive and willing accomplice, and who is in the right stays unresolved throughout. It is Paul Verhoeven's first English-language film, with Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Burlinson and Jack Thompson. Part of the material comes from unused content prepared for Verhoeven's Dutch series Floris. The shoot was hard on everyone. Verhoeven described it as agony all the way; the actor Brion James called it probably the worst experience of his life, citing tensions with the director, the weather and illness through the cast and crew. The real conflict was between Hauer and Verhoeven. Hauer wanted to protect a heroic image while Verhoeven was after moral ambiguity. The friction was severe enough that they never worked together again. Against a 6.5 million dollar budget the US box office stopped at 100,000 dollars. It became a cult film anyway, and Rotten Tomatoes sits at 82 percent. The manga artist Kentaro Miura drew on it for the character designs in Berserk, and Arnold Schwarzenegger admired it enough to want Verhoeven for Total Recall. Who it is for: viewers who like historical films with no clean hero. Who it is not for: anyone sensitive to how the violence and the sexual violence are staged. The film does not pull back in those scenes.