Ironclad 2: Battle For Blood

2011’s ‘Ironclad’ was a moderate medieval action pic with a surprisingly strong cast that took the thirteenth-century Battle of Rochester as an excuse for beardy armour-clad actors to whack lumps out of each other. The sequel offers more of the same – only less so. The connection between the two films is pretty tenuous. Our main man Guy (Tom Austen) saw grisly action at Rochester and now plies his trade as a mercenary. He agrees to help his naive nephew Hubert (Tom Rhys Harries) fend off Scots invaders from his uncle’s border castle purely for the money. But as waves of hairy Celts storm the battlements, Guy begins to feel stirrings of familial loyalty, suggesting that the filmmakers are at least trying to root the axe-wielding carnage in genuine character development. Yet the mayhem itself proves dismayingly repetitive, and not always as persuasive as it might be, since the fast-cut direction seems determined to distract us with flurries of movement and whooshes of CG gore. Much sound and fury ensues, but without a compelling story behind it, it signifies very little.