Flesh + Blood (1985) ✭✭✩✩✩ - Dans Media Digest (original) (raw)

Floris was a 1969 Dutch TV series inspired by the success of the UK’s Ivanhoe and France’s Johan en de Alverman, written by Gerard Soeteman and directed by Paul Verhoeven (Elle), that starred a young Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner). That triumvirate re-teamed in the mid-1980s to work on Verhoeven’s first English-language movie, Flesh + Blood, from a script by Soeteman and Verhoeven they wrote based on unused Floris material.

Originally titled God’s Own Butchers, Verhoeven raised $6.5M through Orion Pictures in the US, having grown disenfranchised with his own government subsidising his movies. This new trans-Atlantic partnership came at a creative cost, however, as the story was initially focused on the rivalry between mercenaries Martin (Rutger Hauer) and Hawkwood (Jack Thompson), but Orion wanted to involve a strong love interest. So the character of aristocratic virgin Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh) was created, meaning the story pivoted away from Hawkwood and more towards Agnes’s fiance Steven (Tom Burlinson), the son of a feudal lord who loses his lover after Martin’s men kidnap her. Steven then spends the runtime trying to rescue his strong-willed bride-to-be from the roguish Martin, who seems to develop feelings for her kidnapper. But is she a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, or faking her emotions to buy more time?

After Flesh + Blood died at the US box office (grossing a paltry $100,000 on limited release), Verhoeven voiced frustration that he bothered changing the story to mollify Orion. Although I don’t think adding a love triangle was a bad move, because the weird Martin-Agnes-Steven love triangle is one of the best aspects of the movie, especially because Agnes’s real feelings aren’t clear. Jennifer Jason Leigh certainly doesn’t play the typical damsel-in-distress we’re accustomed to in historical adventures like this. She’s introduced as a very capable and independent woman, who nevertheless believes love can be guaranteed through magic ritual (eating a mandrake vegetable grown beneath the corpse of a hanged man).

… then consider buying it from Amazon.