- Jude Law, Alicia Vikander, Eddie Marsan, Sam Riley
- September 6th 2024
- Karim Ainouz
Alicia Vikander plays Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife Katherine Parr in this work of historical fiction.
After a couple of years away from our cinema screens, Alicia Vikander is back as Katherine Parr in the period drama Firebrand.
In Karim Aïnouz’s film, Parr, the sixth and last wife of Henry VIII (Jude Law), is named regent and put in a position of power while he is away fighting battles abroad.
When the King returns home, he falls out of love with his wife and becomes paranoid and suspicious of her, claiming that she has betrayed him or committed heresy. Parr has to take matters into her own hands to ensure her survival when he turns against her.
This sounds like a really tense and dramatic film about betrayal and the struggle for power and control within an abusive marriage. But it only becomes that in the second half and takes a very long time to get there.
The pacing in the first half is totally off. It is slow and you may become bored. Thankfully, things turn around when the King returns home – the narrative gains some momentum and builds to an intense and gripping finale.
Viewers should be aware that Firebrand is based on a work of historical fiction – Elizabeth Fremantle’s novel Queen’s Gambit – so what you see on-screen should not be taken as the truth. Historians will be horrified by the inaccuracies featured here!
The film is the most compelling when Vikander and Law are together. She is radiant in her glorious period costumes but Law is the one who shines. The focus should be on Parr but Henry is the more outlandish and dramatic character so he steals her thunder.
Law completely transforms into the insecure and egotistical tyrant. After being a heartthrob in the ’90s and 2000s, he is no longer concerned about vanity on-screen and depicts the King as a gross, deplorable and smelly human being, with a rotting infected leg.
Parr isn’t as well known as some of Henry VIII’s other wives – Anne Boleyn, for example – but she was a radical schemer and a woman ahead of her time. It’s a shame Firebrand isn’t quite as strong as the woman it depicts.
In cinemas from Friday 6th September.
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