Alicia Vikander is the titular \u201cFirebrand,\u201d starring as Katherine Parr, the sixth and final wife of Henry VIII.\u00a0But the movie that reframes her legacy as a\u00a0free-thinking and vengeful radical is only fitfully fiery itself.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jude Law\u00a0actually steals\u00a0the show as the corpulent and capricious king.\u00a0Every time\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0on screen, director Karim\u00a0A\u00efnouz\u2019s\u00a0film roars frighteningly to life.\u00a0This ordinarily beautiful man subsumes himself to the grotesquerie,\u00a0delivering a performance\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0at once hammy and terrifying.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Otherwise,\u00a0A\u00efnouz\u2019s\u00a0film, written by\u00a0Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth and based on the\u00a0historical fiction\u00a0novel Queen\u2019s Gambit<\/em>\u00a0by Elizabeth Fremantle, is too often a muted\u00a0period drama.\u00a0Much\u00a0of that is by necessity: Katherine must remain stealthy\u00a0in her pursuits of intellectual and religious freedom or risk befalling the same fate as the\u00a0previous\u00a0five wives. It is\u00a0literally a\u00a0matter of survival.\u00a0Vikander is\u00a0an\u00a0actress\u00a0of\u00a0understated grace, but here, she rarely gets the opportunity to\u00a0indicate\u00a0her character\u2019s inner turmoil. The eyes of the court are on her always, and spies are\u00a0everywhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is especially true during a brief period in 1544, when Henry is off fighting in France and Katherine holds the\u00a0temporary\u00a0position of regent.\u00a0She\u2019d\u00a0already been serving as a mother figure to Henry\u2019s children from\u00a0earlier\u00a0marriages, Elizabeth\u00a0(Junia Rees) and Edward (Patrick Buckley), the young heir to the throne. But now she must lead meetings\u00a0about boring bureaucratic stuff with\u00a0advisers who side-eye each other\u00a0at her suggestions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Katherine\u00a0also uses the opportunity to visit with a childhood friend\u00a0who\u2019s\u00a0become a charismatic preacher: Anne Askew (Erin Doherty, hugely compelling in a brief role),\u00a0who dares to have progressive notions about the church and be a woman at the same time. \u201cFirebrand\u201d truly sparks in this early scene, as we can see the charge of excitement running\u00a0through Katherine\u2019s body as she reconnects with someone who\u00a0genuinely\u00a0understands her,\u00a0perhaps on\u00a0multiple levels. The prospect of a\u00a0romantic flirtation lingers in the\u00a0thick\u00a0forest air.\u00a0<\/p>\n But then\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0back to palace intrigue, full of whispers in dark corridors and hangers-on strenuously playing both sides. Chief among them\u00a0is Eddie Marsan as Edward\u00a0Seymour, uncle of\u00a0Prince Edward\u00a0through his late sister, Jane Seymour,\u00a0Henry\u2019s\u00a0third wife. He and his brother,\u00a0Thomas (Sam Riley),\u00a0aim to remain in the volatile\u00a0king\u2019s good graces.\u00a0There is also the undercooked suggestion that Katherine and Thomas may have had some kind of fling, which prompts the arrogant king\u2019s jealousy.\u00a0Mainly, these\u00a0men\u00a0are called upon here to mutter their manipulations beneath voluminous beards.\u00a0A\u00efnouz\u00a0rarely builds tension through these machinations; surprisingly, given\u00a0what\u2019s\u00a0at stake, \u201cFirebrand\u201d is often a bit of a slog.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alicia Vikander is the titular \u201cFirebrand,\u201d starring as Katherine Parr, the sixth and final wife of Henry VIII.\u00a0But the movie that reframes her legacy as a\u00a0free-thinking and vengeful radical is only fitfully fiery itself.\u00a0\u00a0 Jude Law\u00a0actually steals\u00a0the show as the corpulent and capricious king.\u00a0Every time\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0on screen, director Karim\u00a0A\u00efnouz\u2019s\u00a0film roars frighteningly to life.\u00a0This ordinarily beautiful man …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[45,55],"class_list":["post-1165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drama-movies","tag-drama","tag-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}