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And Audiences Giggle.

Cross Lord of the Rings with a bodice-ripper romance and mix in a little Gladiator and you have this two-part movie starring hunky Scot Gerard Butler as the marauding king of the Scythian hordes known as the Huns. The Romans called him the Scourge of God, and the real Attila brought Europe to its knees, but Attila in this movie is played by Butler as a tormented man with a sexy overbite and some family dysfunction. There is intrigue and bloodwash aplenty. The Huns are depicted as a rather Celtic, not Asian, tribe, complete with wood sprite who delivers prophecies to Attila, King-Arthur style. These involve a gaining ownership of a sword, with which one rules the world. Okaaaay....

Decent, albeit comic, performances are given as Romans by Tim Curry and some other guy as emperor of Rome about this time frame (the year 452 or thereabouts). Powers Boothe is Roman General Flavius Aetius who alternately conspires with and against Attila. The emperor's sister, a hot-looking Roman princess in a corsety-type thing I am pretty sure did not exist in that timeframe, seduces Attila in a bath, even though he's supposed to be in love with the red haired woman his tribe captured from a village. Men never change. Alice Krige as the emperor's mother is much prettier here than she was as the Borg Queen in Star Trek but she's bitchy and conspires against everybody, even her own children.

Gerard Butler makes a sexy Attila, and he can invade my village anytime. However, he's Scottish, and seems to be affecting some kind of weird accent here, where syllables fall out of his mouth in an oddly non-commanding warrior way. Fearsome Attila gets his comeuppance on his wedding night, all right, but not in the historically accurate way. But USA's way is much more romantic and candle-lit. Complete with mighty Attila wearing a diaper configuration.

Alas, history lovers will find no great interest here. However, if you are in the mood for swashbuckling in the Braveheart mode and eye-candy in the form of Mr. Butler, this is the movie for you!


The death knell of the Roman empire.   March 12, 2002
 108 out of 113 found this review helpful

Here is a wonderful movie that mixes fact & fiction, sometimes telling factual events in a fictional way. All in all, however, it is a film that is well done & well worth viewing.

It is a fact that Attila did set foot inside the walls of Rome as a guest. However, it is false that he was the guest of Flavius Aetius while both were grown men. As a matter of fact, as a boy the two were "exchanged." Atilla lived in Rome while Flavius Aetius lived amongst the Huns. It was then that Attila swore that he would return one day not as a guest of Rome, but as its conquerer.

It is dubious that Attila obtained a liking for the hot baths of Rome during his youthful sojourn in the city. By all accounts of the period historians, the king of the Huns lived a very simple and Spartan existence, despite the excesses of his officers and his extravagant wealth. Gerard Butler also portrays a bit more of a debonair and "GQ looking" Atilla than I ever imagined the historical Atilla. However, that is forgivable. After all, this is Hollywood, right?

It is a fact that Valentian III personally murdered Aetius (bad idea) in 454 A.D. As someone supposedly told Valentian, "With your left hand, you have cut off your right hand." Also, the Romans did sign a treaty with the Visigothic king Theoderic I to aid in fighting the Huns. This was a reversal from earlier times when the Romans and Huns ganged up on the Visigoths. This is recounted accurately in the film.

All in all, this was an extremely good effort. It is very hard to display the dwindling years of an empire's hegemony in 3 short hours. This movie does an excellent job with the material at its disposal. The battle scenes are fairly well done, and they even pull off a passable battle of the Catalaunian Plains in the climactic sequence. However, the armies are a bit undersized; it quickly becomes evident that the film's budget did not have the resources for an extensive use of extras. But, the battle scenes are well choreographed & do show off the "tortiose" formation of the Legions.

After the death of Attila, Rome held on to her supremacy for a few more decades before finally seeing her empire fade into the darkness. Rome was one of the greatest and most long-lasting empires the world has ever seen. It was people like Atilla and Shapur who helped push it over the precipice. As such, Atilla became one of the most feared, hated and respected men in all of history. Herein lies his story.


Thoroughly entertaining - forget silly "inacuracy" argument   September 10, 2004
 34 out of 42 found this review helpful

Having read many review on how inaccurate this film were, I decided that I'l have a go myself anyway. Being a fervent student of classical civilisation myself, I thought - that wasn't a bad film at all. I agreed that the film is not 100% accurate but not to the point that Attila had conquered the Roman Empire. The film did well to put all historical element together and added some "spice" that would make the film interesting to the general audience.

We all knew that Attila is not a handsome hunk, But try to put yourself in the director and producer perspective. Could you really find an actor of Attila description in the film industry. No, you couldn't even if you wanted to. I you want one you would have to import directly from Mongolia, and I doulbt that the Attila would speak at all during the entire film. Also, it is not economically viable to use any person as such, the film just won't sale. The film-makers are not trying to make a documentary. They are making films, and film suppost to by enjoy as novel, not histoy book.

I doulbt that the legend of King Arthur and his Knights as we know is historically accurate. Nor wizard do play quiddich!! The film "King Arthur" (2004), which base more along the line of historical account, is no better than any other "historical inaccurate" film before it. At the end of the film, my sister who have no interest whatsoever in ancient history asked me for some historical background and asked to borrow some book on the subject of Attila and the Roman Empire. I felt that the film-makers could say "mission accomplished".


Inaccurate but Good   May 21, 2001
 31 out of 34 found this review helpful

Attila attempts to portray the struggle of two men and two cultures between 433 and 453 AD. On the one hand, Attila the Hun is depicted in a fairly favorable light as a Barbarian warlord bent upon raising his steppe-dwelling people up from poverty to world domination. General Flavius Aetius, wonderfully acted by Powers Boothe, is depicted as the "last of the Romans," intent upon frustrating Attila's conquests and thereby preserving the tottering Roman Empire. Thus, the stage is set for a great mano-i-mano battle between the haves and the have-nots of the world. As history, the film gets the essential elements correct: Attilla and Aetius did exist and do most of the things depicted. The film is also rich in the tensions evident in a decaying Roman empire and a seething mass of Barbarians awaiting the final death throes. However, the film also abbreviates and alters a great many of the particulars of this classic late-empire struggle.

Aetitius was in fact something of a barbarian himself. Although the film depicts him as imprisoned by the conniving regent, the mother of the Emporer Valentinian III, Aetitius in fact spent three years (430-433 AD) hiding out with the Huns after an unsuccessful power struggle. There were virtually no "Roman" troops left for Aetitius to command and he relied heavily on Huns and Goths to fill out his ranks. The film's depiction of Roman troops in 1st Century AD uniforms and equipment is erroneous. Attila's troops are also depicted as ethnic Europeans when in fact, they were of central Asian origin. The more bizarre but factual Hun traits, such as ritual mutilation of their faces to make themselves seem more fearsome, are not shown. The final Battle of Chalons is not represented accurately at all, but it still interesting. Many such aspects of this film will be annoying to historians for lacking in veracity.

In fact, it is rather surprising to see such a favorable impression of the Huns. Personally, I was cheering when Attila drinks poison at the end, because he was one of the most evil and dangerous men in history. Attila's entire legacy consists of devastation, arson, looting and murder. He and his Huns were only capable of destruction, not creation, as this film suggests. Had he been more successful, Christianity might have been destroyed in infancy.

Unlike the flashier film Gladiator, Attila has much more character depth and plot outline. The twenty-year struggle of Attila versus Aetitius is far more interesting than a simple revenge movie. While many small details are incorrect, the film does get the major issues correct. There are not many films about the later years of the Roman Empire, but this film is probably one of the best.


Surprisingly accurate, but Attila is miscast   June 30, 2003
 20 out of 25 found this review helpful

Like other reviewers, my BS detector kept going off throughout this film, and there are moments that are too laughable to believed, not least of which is the movie's premise that Attila owed his empire to a proto-Phish fan named Gailan, who pranced around the forest with a beaver dam on her head.

But most of the movie, according to the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (from which the events of the film must have been drawn), is true. Improbably, Attila and Aetius did share a friendship, and the whole 'Excalibur' center of the film, which I laughed at hardest, was based on fact: Attila did use a war sword found by one of his subjects as a sign of his power.

There are small lapses: Theodosius and Placidia were both dead by the time Attila invaded Gaul, and the western empire's power, wealth and creativity at the time is exaggerated. To be fair, the movie does suggest a nation in decline. But "Attila" stumbles in its depiction of the Huns. They were not white. The Huns were an Asiatic people, closer to the Mongolians than the wandering tribe of Welshmen depicted in the film. Attila himself was short and squat, with an extremely thin beard and an imperious manner.

Gerard Butler, who plays Attila, is a tall, leonine man who tries to convey the hard edge of the conqueror in his performance. He bears a strong resemblance to Mel Gibson in "Braveheart," but Butler's performance suggests a guy who got a horse for the weekend and decided to invade France with his buddies. Half of his problem is the script, which wants the king of the Huns to be the Scourge of God and the Sensitive Teen, occasionally at the same time. But Butler lacks subtlety. He drops his voice when he's sad, and raises it when he's angry, and there's no in-between. Some unintentionally funny moments arise from the performance: "We could RULE the WORLD!" forced a chuckle out of me.

Powers Boothe, as Aetius, is superb, and nails his character's contradictions in the manner you would have expected from Butler. When he's on screen, the film takes on the later Roman Empire's blend of decadence, depravity and determination. It's fascinating, and nearly raises "Attila" to the level of minor classic. Alice Krige also does well as his Roman nemesis, Placidia. The battle scenes look cheap, though that's forgivable for a mini-series. The ending feels a bit rushed, even for a three-hour movie.

"Attila" will hold your attention. It's worth a rental. But you can't escape the feeling this could have been more.