Ironclad: Battle for Blood

The title's promise of violence is dutifully met in gory, sonically squishy close-quarter melees shot in Confuse-o-vision, as if the camera had been strapped to a whirring blender before the footage was edited with the puree button.

Co-writer/director Jonathan English ups the viscera and nudity at the expense of a compelling narrative, which was hardly the original’s strong suit (if indeed it had one) anyway.

The sumptuous production values and stirring performances that make the equally brutal Game Of Thrones so irresistible are nowhere in evidence in Battle For Blood, which has all of Thrones’ savagery, but none of its mystery.

Writer-director Jonathan English’s dank-looking film delivers enough amputations, decapitations and other instances of rusty-bladed gore to distract undiscerning genre fans stuck between seasons of “Game of Thrones,” but serves no other obvious purpose.

How anybody can suffer more then 5 minutes of this production is an absolute bewilderment? This film's mislabeling, a parody? Upon opening, suffering through an underground bare fist brawl??? This happening in an historic period of bloodsport, where bears dogs wolves where prevalent, and most other gladitorial weaponry. A real thumbs down. Seeing the brawlers in skin tight leather pants, finally managing to acquire weapons after bets, further committing those unseen age restrictions. However the rest of the bar circle, are not using a traditional shield wall. Because they all want to get hacked, have been placing their bets with bingo chips. Within the next 5 minutes seeing bra's in chain mail, duvets and duvet pillows, pyjamas, and a seemingly endless list upon further expansion of error. Although most importantly those other trog like band camp features found in make a hipster movie productions. When upon totally exploiting the genre with incongruous ludicrous absurdity. Avoid at all cost.... They certainly have....