Screen

...It is derived from the chronicle works (Richard II and Henry IV), is limited (despite Shakespeare's efforts) by an episodic structure, misses the presence of Falstaff, and lacks tragic conflict...

...during trial scenes, you never know where Lange is getting the inside information she uses to discredit witnesses...

...Henry V is not a perfect whole...

...The myth of "this blessed isle" is juxtaposed with the brute reality of antique statecraft, as Branagh first symbolizes, then dramatizes kingship as a permanent "edge of the cliff' existence...

...Lange stays completely in character as a tough defense counsel and fiercely loyal daughter...

...Jacobi's second speech, magnificently shot over the cliffs of Dover, is followed by the king angrily arresting and throttling some noble traitors before setting off for France...

...Or take the Act III announcement of the execution of Bardolph (one of Henry's lower-life pals) and see how Branagh cinematizes it...

...members of the Arrow Cross weren't "faceless bureaucrats...

...The court scenes in Music Box are filled with horrible tales of activities of the Hungarian "Arrow Cross," home-grown Nazis who, lacking ammunition in 1944, used some sadistically inventive means to murder...

...to her he is "Papa," the hard-working steel hand and single parent who sustained her when her mother died...

...Branagh, a twenty-nine-year-old actor/director, has adapted and stars in this grimily authentic, bloody spectacle...

...Branagh mines the second one for the contemporary suggestion: make love, not war...

...The film has minor problems: it starts unevenly...

...in the film, they 're inserted as vivid flashbacks...

...Branagh can't change this, or is too honest to try...

...Like Olivier, Branagh roots the play in theatrical heritage, starting with Jacobi's vibrant, stage-house introduction...

...but not the prosecutor (Frederick Forrest...

...Like Olivier, Branagh knows that such a work was never meant to be read, but seen and heard...

...Music Box also contains excellent acting, and manages to make credible, exciting use of well-known recipes for mounting tension...

...But their collaboration here has little resonance on a psychological level...

...It raises hard issues about heroic glory in a "just war," then bows to the need for patriotic and dynastic propaganda-Fluellen sparkles in part to please Elizabeth I, half Welsh herself...

...Fortunately, Branagh doesn't go to the opposite extreme of the shock-addict modernizers who equate "relevance" and theatrical pizzazz with putting Mohawks on Mercutios...

...An early sequence typifies Branagh's approach...

...The first has some bilingual bawdy only Shakespeare would be mischievous and gifted enough to try...

...But the film falls short...

...Many, many ghosts hover around this film...

...Eszterhas has also served Lange well: unlike many women lawyers in so many thrillers on screen lately, she is not made to fall in love with someone inconvenient...

...His Henry is heroic, but not glamorous...

...Unfortunately, director Constantin Costa-Gavras and writer Joe Eszterhas have not given enough depth to their characters to make the movie succeed...

...Her best acting in Music Box involves her caring for him, matched only by the physical distress she shows when she goes to Budapest (in some richly textured scenes) to find out the truth about his (and her) past...

...Lange's attorney is her most mature, least sexually oriented role to date...

...As the Greeks' and Shakespeare's use of well-known stories suggests, suspense doesn't always depend on the audience not knowing the outcome...

...Her anguish is even more pitiable given her fear for her son (Lukas Haas), named after her father, whom the boy adores...

...Branagh tries to turn his Henry slightly against war-or at least to use the resources of current moviemaking to depict more grossly the horror of battle...

...Eszterhas knows the Hungarian side of this, and Costa-Gavras (maker of Z and Missing) knows his political history...

...But this is even more reason for the movie to get beyond cliches and examine how nice fathers and husbands could once, across Europe, have become monsters...

...Forrest says the case exemplifies not the "banality of evil" but its vivid reality...

...Despite its problems, Branagh's Henry V never tires...

...The two scenes are worth the price of several admissions...

...Branagh's mud-besplattered screen becomes a way back through "the dark, backward and abysm of time" to the company of the actor/bard and the start of this grand tradition of art/entertainment...

...The fear of pollution makes Music Box resemble Greek drama in more ways than one...

...he staggers to victory with a body over his shoulder like a cross...

...Here, of course, the defendant would be out of the question...

...She looks hardened, unglamorous, Hungarian-the film's makeup crew having craftily pushed her German features slightly southeast...

...This past is not hard to guess from near the beginning of the film-in itself no major flaw...

...Lange always will be a physically imposing actress, but in Music Box she keeps this under restraint, except for one well-timed courtroom gesture...

...He only hints at how he sees Henry growing...

...But we are bound to hope that Mueller-Stahl was not one of them, as Lange claims, especially because of her own horror at the stories and at anyone (especially her ex-father-in-law, a suave WASP cliche from Lake Forest) who denies the Holocaust...

...Branagh can't succeed entirely because of the nature of the play...

...It ends where it could have started, in a quick portrayal of Lange's ethical conflict...

...Jessica Lange powers it as an attorney defending her father (Armin Mueller-Stahl) against charges that he hid a war criminal past when emigrating to Chicago in the early 1950s...

...several scenes near the beginning have painfully abrupt conclusions...

...he rescues Shakespeare from teachers who reduce his audience by treating plays primarily as poetry-a narrower, more cerebral province, and one much harder to enter (hence classroom death...

...Instead, he finds new ways of transfiguring the riches of Shakespeare's stage and the rough and tumble of medieval politics to the screen...

...Nor do we get to know what makes Mueller-Stahl tick...

...TOM O'BRIEN...

...Branagh is stalking something difficult: without imposing on the play, he aims at a new interpretation...

...Her affection for Mueller-Stahl is compelling...

...Branagh improves on Shakespeare...

...Under his guidance, Paul Scofield (the French king), Derek Jacobi (the chorus), Ian Holm (the Welsh army officer, Fluellen), Judi Dench (Mistress Quickly, host of the Eastcheap tavern where Henry once caroused), and Christian Bale (a boy soldier) give a rousing lesson in ensemble craftsmanship...

...It often relies on watching people teeter on the edge of sure disaster, which makes us sympathize more with their pain, or hope against hope when it seems an escape is impossible...

...Eszterhas gives them rich material from his own Hungarian roots, and Costa-Gavras manages court scenes for effective suspense...

...Aside from theatricality, the surest sign it was written by an actor is how well its author knew where his bread was buttered...

...Olivier's stirring wartime Henry V (1944) played off parallels between Agincourt and the D-Day everyone knew was coming in Northern France...

...But the film's major flaw is that it substitutes surface and plot for motive and character...

...Against genre, there is no sexual tension between the two, only anger without undertone...

...On stage, recollections of Henry's tavern escapades are limited to speech...

...Branagh's Henry is sadder and more realistic...

...This Henry is new through imaginative authenticity...

...Shakespeare provided, and Branagh exploits, great comic and romantic relief in scenes where the French princess (played by Branagh's wife, Emma Thompson) learns English and later resists, then yields to, Henry's forceful courtship...

...Indeed, in some ways (if this be heresy, make the most of it...

...Since the hatreds on which they focus are still a force in Eastern Europe, this film could have been both rich and timely...

...Olivier also dropped Shakespeare's references to English treason and the closing chorus, which emphasized how temporary Henry's triumphs were...

...Witness Kenneth Branagh's Henry V. It almost out-Oliviers Olivier...