Synopsis
A band of medieval mercenaries take revenge on a noble lord who decides not to pay them by kidnapping the betrothed of the noble's son. As the plague and warfare cut a swathe of destruction throughout the land, the mercenaries hole up in a castle and await their fate.
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Cast
- Rutger HauerMartin
- Jennifer Jason LeighAgnes
- Tom BurlinsonSteven
- Jack ThompsonHawkwood
- Susan TyrrellCeline
- Ronald LaceyCardinal
- Brion JamesKarsthans
- John Dennis JohnstonSummer
- Bruno KirbyOrbec
- Fernando HilbeckArnolfini
Recommendations
- 80
Variety
Flesh + Blood is a vivid and muscular, if less than fully startling, account of lust, savagery, revenge, betrayal and assorted other dark doings in the Middle Ages. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
The battle scenes are impressive, though underpopulated, and the camerawork is fluid. - 67
The A.V. Club
Though Flesh + Blood tells a terrific story, written by Verhoeven with his longtime collaborator Gerard Soeteman, the presentation is rough, and not just because the film is packed with gore and rape. Verhoeven doesn't believe in tasteful framing that implies nudity; he prefers the bare-assed variety, the kind that makes the body's frailty plain. - 63
Slant Magazine
In the end, Verhoeven’s greatest irony, and the often pedestrian narrative’s most brilliant stroke, isn’t to decide in favor or against Martin. He’s of a piece with his nature, and he leaves the story as he entered it: unchanged and unbowed by the carnage he’s both witness to and agent of - 60
Time Out
It's hamstrung by leaden dialogue and the motley international cast - Python and the Grail are never that far away - but it's admirably unsentimental and by no means stupid. - 60
CineVue
Paul Verhoeven’s first English language film Flesh + Blood is bloody, cynical and unrefined, but indicative of his later satirical tendencies. - 40
Los Angeles Times
A medieval adventure-love saga in which all the cliches have been turned inside out. Instead of chivalry, the 1985 movie focuses on swinishness and brutality. Instead of love it offers lust and lechery; instead of heroism, pillage and murder. The "instead-ofs" go on and on, leaving us no one to root for and everything and everybody finally a turn-off. [10 July 1988, p.TV2]
