There's a phrase I used where I say that a movie feels like two movies. Meaning, there are two plot threads and they don't mesh so well that you think one isn't more interesting than the other. Maybe a movie is about a hard-drinking cop on the edge out to avenge his family, but you'd rather watch the kinky reporter moonlighting as an assassin on his tail. Flesh + Blood is something like that, only I've never seen two half-movies so diametrically opposed.
Plot: Ruler Arnolfini has been deposed and is laying siege to his former city with an army of mercenaries, including Rutger Hauer as Martin, who is somewhat in the Robert E. Howard mode of "badass asshole" (badasshole)
Studies show that a majority of audiences would prefer a sitcom about a murderous rapist knight than Martin Lawrence. A year later, Game of Thrones came out.Arnolfini motivates them by promising a day of looting and plunder if they retake the city (and since Paul Verhoeven is directing, you can bet there'll be the other thing), but when they do, he realizes he's still going to have to govern the place and banishes the lot of them sans loot. Martin and his comrades don't take kindly to that, so after the local inexplicably insane priest proclaims that Martin is the Chosen One, they set off on a jihad/vendetta... which consists of ambushing Arnolfini's caravan and inadvertently kidnapping his future daughter-in-law, Agnes. Arnolfini's son, Steven, a sort of medieval MacGuyver, sets out to rescue her.
Here's where the A and B plot divorce and decide to share joint custody of the movie. Again, Paul Verhoeven, so the entire movie is pretty gritty and realistic (except for Steven's somewhat random Da Vinci inventions, although nowadays those would probably be CGI mummies or something, so we'll let it slide). Martin and his band of mercenaries decide to rape Agnes, because the Dark Ages, with Martin going first, but Agnes decides to rape him back. Umm... girl power? See, she's a virgin, and earlier she found out that her maid was having sex with a man-at-arms, so she ordered her maid to have sex in front of her because do you really expect Paul Verhoeven not to film a scene about a voyeuristic Jennifer Jason Leigh, and the maid said she wasn't in the mood but Agnes was like "ho, it's the Middle Ages!" so she did that and it seemed to work out alright, but Agnes got pissed off and told her to stop having sex, so they chased each other around and hugged.
Chicks, man.
That was fun, now let's watch True Blood!From this, Agnes learns that if you hug with legs in friendship, it beats missionary position rape like rock beats scissors. Or paper, if you think about it, what are you gonna do to stop me if I have a rock and you have a piece of paper? You can't even block the rock if I throw it at you.
So Martin falls in love with Agnes, which mainly consists of not letting anyone else rape her (not through alpha-male proclamations that she's his, but just saying "Hey, look over there! Something more important than raping Jennifer Jason Leigh!" whenever someone remembers it sucked to be a women in the Middle Ages). However, not but ten minutes after Rapeapalooza, Agnes starts to fall for Martin.
So here's the two movies: In one, we have a Martin/Agnes/Steven love triangle, with Agnes being tempted by, I don't know, the outlaw lifestyle (which consists of literally being a prostitute, so you can see why she'd prefer it to being a princess), and in the other, it's almost a deconstruction of "men's adventure" fantasy stories focusing on the damsel in distress and her trying to live through an ordeal where she has zero control or power, just her wits.
And you cannot at all do both. You can either have Agnes trying to survive being the hostage of a bunch of rapey fiends or have her torn between two men, but one of those men can't be a rapist jerk, otherwise it's not a love triangle, it's Stockholm Syndrome. You can have Team Edward and Team Jacob, but you can't have Team Rape and Team Consensual Sex. I can't imagine anyone feeling any sort of sympathy for Martin and his friends, since they're a bunch of rapists, and yet the next most sympathetic protagonist is Agnes, and we can't root for her when she's doing stupid things like falling for her rapist. I mean, just think what she'd tell the kids.
So *that's* why they won't just say who the mom is!The discrepancy has even led to some reviews where people are calling Agnes out for flip-flopping between Martin and Steven, when she's clearly trying to keep Steven and herself alive through some pretty tough shit. And yet, that interesting, even feminist narrative is stuffed behind Rutger Hauer and some weaksauce religious satire (so opportunistic assholes used religion to justify their dickishness? Around the time of the Crusades, too? You don't say!).
Which brings us to the end, where (spoiler!) Steven and Martin go mano-e-mano for the girl and it seems like Martin dies, but he manages to live to fight another day. Which seems unfair both to Steven, for all the shit he went through to rescue Agnes, and for her not to mention "Oh, yeah, that guy who caused all this trouble in the first place is still walking around, right over there." And to Martin, even, since the movie has him going completely bonkers and trying some murder-suicide pact with Agnes, only for ten minutes later having him walk away like "Well, that was a thing." I mean, if you're gonna be a stalker with a crush, commit to it. You can't give it up just because your victim falls for someone else; that's not being a stalker with a crush, that's being Ralph Bellamy.
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