Too much of everything

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

not horrible nor great

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

In the tradition of Becket comes The Royal Hunt Of The Sun, a piece of important history reduced to a personal struggle between two men. Only these two, Conquistador Francisco Pizarro and Emperor Atahualpa of the Incas have far more in common than they think.The Royal Hunt Of The Sun was a successful play on Broadway running for 261 performances, written by Peter Shaffer. It won a Tony Award for young David Carradine playing Atahualpa. But in the film version Robert Shaw plays Pizarro and Christopher Plummer who was Pizarro on stage plays Atahualpa. I'm guessing that Plummer's Pizarro was a bit less rough around the edges than Shaw is in the film.He's certainly a fascinating Atahualpa who like the early emperors of the Roman Empire took divinity unto himself. The problem is that when you're supposed to be a god, you have to occasionally do something really spectacular to prove your claim. That's what kind of undoes Plummer in the end.As for Pizarro, he never claimed he was anything, not even a gentleman. He was a soldier by profession, an illegitimate kid who raised pigs as a young man and left to join the Spanish army of Emperor Charles V. Atahualpa was also born on the wrong side of the blanket and defeated his brother in a civil war for the Inca Empire. That's a most human act and Pizarro is quick to notice.He also is a shrewd judge of the Inca psychology. When in that famous event he tricks Atahualpa into captivity, Pizarro realizes the empire built on a godhead emperor can't function without him. The Incas are paralyzed with the fact they're whole belief system is being put to the test and failing badly. Of course in theological discussions with Father Andrew Keir of the expedition, Atahualpa's not doing too bad himself. But these are only academic exercises.This is not a faithful adaption. The whole scene at Charles V's court with James Donald as the Emperor is written for the screen. A whole lot of peripheral characters have been changed as well. Still the spirit of what author Shaffer was trying to say is realized.The Royal Hunt Of The Sun is both entertaining and intellectually stimulating.

Just how DO you make those planked, rope bridges that you see cross deep ravines in films? The one in Royal Hunt of the Sun is so many hundreds of years old, and yet is made so tough that one instance sees three men successfully carry a large cannon over it, but one other soldier on his own puts a foot through one of the boards and nearly falls to his death. But I digress from the more burning; more taxing issues and ideas apparent in Royal Hunt of the Sun. It would be true to say that everyone's favourite action orientated, mythical adventure genre cliché in the rope bridge is out in force in the 1969 Irving Lerner film; but there's an underlying current of study included with most of what goes on during the early segments. Such an opening sounds disjointed, leaping from arbitrary rope bridge conversation to the mentioning of deeper ideas; but such is the manner of this opening as is of the film in question. The film, essentially cut into two parts and parted right down the middle by a maddening and somewhat misguided slow motion sword fight sequence to some high tempo Spanish flamenco music, ends on a deeply disturbing and rather philosophical note when a man's word; a bond between men; a truce between men and whether the co-existing of religions from different nations and cultures are possible. Most characters came in search of gold they did not have; but one man, the leader, found something else which was inside of him the entire time. Robert Shaw plays that man, a true-to-life Spanish explorer by the name of Francisco Pizarro whom journeys to South America once again in search of a trove of gold in some form. Prior to embarking, Pizarro stands in front of his peers and their subjects; goading them as idle persons standing by waiting for the nation of Spain to sink into some sort of ruin. Pizarro dares to dream, dares to explore and assumes to love the nation more than those in front of him. Pizarro's wish in granted, once again, by the higher-ups that are present, for another romp in search of indescribable treasures, but they maintain he is "a mere adventurer, nothing more".Pizarro's inability to properly connect with those in a long, spindly location of royal dwelling in his native Spain as those at the top sit at one end and those summoned stand at the other, is raised later on when whilst in the presence of the leader of the natives of the land he has arrived at, Christopher Plummer's walking Inca God Atahualpa, a level of communication is reached; a sense of understanding is accomplished – here is a man who dares to dream in equal manner; whose eccentricity twinned with his habit to think outside of the proverbial box matches Pizarro's. Their overall dress and look may be of clear binary opposition in their clothes and hair, but the understanding they have binds them; something exemplified through items such as their sharing of illiteracy. It is a connection that will be pushed pretty far when an agreement to do with preserving one's life in exchange for something else which in turn ought to guarantee the preserving of someone else's is used as a drive for a final third pot-boiler.Royal Hunt of the Sun is initially a romping, sweeping adventure flick running on a drive to do with the search for something that might not even exist and has not been found on many-a past occasion by the same individual who has cost many-a life in the process. Armed with religion in the form of a priest convinced all those who have not taken to the bible and its readings are yet to be truly fulfilled in their life; a young Paige by the name of Martin (Whiting) and Pizarro's own razor sharp tongue and wit, they take it upon themselves to finally uncover the legend of the gold in finding it. Bearing in mind it is a full three years prior to Herzog's Aguirre: The Wrath of God; a film similar in premise, Royal Hunt of the Sun cannot be denied its sense of historical context and additional inspiration. The first half enjoys its wide establishing shots of the dry wilderness the Spaniards must conquer, as it does its unnerving confrontations with the local Inca tribesmen which are rendered quick witted; pulpy; hillside sequences of fast-paced banter, rebounding between talk of religion and the whereabouts of the riches.Following that bizarre centrefold fight sequence in which the Spanish have their religion rejected and many Inca tribes-people are massacred, Royal Hunt of the Sun beds down into a two locale maximum piece; really starting to show its stage roots but offering a little more than singular strand adventure fable in which rope bridges and nervy interactions with the native locals are the order of the day. The shift sees the film change gears and opt for content of a different kind of dramatic nature which isn't of an overly visual sort, instead relying on conflicts to do with a man's bond versus another's well-being; a man's thoughts and ideas conflicting with that of the state's, evident when Pizarro attempts to reject the conquistadors that are his own in favour of the Inca leader. This, plus a conflict of interests in religion: whether this South American band of people even need the western world's thoughts and musings on all things holy, which is rendered a form of modernity in the travelling priest whose aim it seems is to transfer knowledge. The film works, and although its seams are a little more obvious than I would've liked, its shifting of content of a dramatic weight makes for interesting and somewhat engrossing viewing.

I thought that this was a very interesting, but deeply flawed film. Have to admit that I don't remember much of it, but there was unnecessary playing with film technique, but all in all the film was very critical of the conquistadors and I suppose we should be thinking about parallels between the conquest of the Central America in the 16th century and the Vietnam war in the 1960s. There's one deeply intriguing scene in which the white soldiers massacre a whole Indian tribe and director Irving Lerner (for whom this was the last theatrical film) plays flamenco in the soundtrack! It's as if he were saying: look how we got this cultural heritage, without the conquistadors slaying all the Indians we wouldn't have the American culture. (Which is basically true.)

Producer Phillip Yordan had some pretty tough days in the early 1970s. Yordan was charged with tax evasion, I believe as part of his relationship with Samuel Bronston and Pierre DuPont. Bronston had allegedly comingled Dupont's money on several of his productions (most notably EL CID and FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE). Bronston was finished by the late 1960s and Yordan would fall later, which may explain the erratic production values of BAD MAN'S RIVER and ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN.SUN remains, a tattered quasi-masterpiece, despite Christopher Plummer's rather eccentric performance. One wonders what might have been. No matter, what is on display is good enough for the cheap price of the the DVD. Nevertheless, the quality of the DVD leaves much to be desired. The DVD uses a distracting "baby or royal blue" rather than black for its letterboxing. The interlacing is so bad in some sequences, the film is hardly viewable. The sound is uniformly underrecorded. Surely the masters weren't in THIS bad a shape.Worth a look for students of history AND of good drama.