A war without a battle

With a title like this, and posters of gents in 17th century hats and hairdos against an English Civil War backdrop, you expect at least one big battle. No way: the budget of Mike Barker's financially much-troubled film cannot run to it.

Flags wave, muskets sound, horses neigh, men shriek - but all impressionistically behind the credits.

The battle of Naseby, the decisive victory of Cromwell's Roundheads against King Charles's Cavaliers, is over before we see it.

After the credits clear and we have done a phoneylooking recce of dead and wounded, we are into a sober, but conspiratorially verbose chamber-piece inspired by an unconvincing male bonding between General Fairfax, nobleman turned man of the people, and Oliver Cromwell, republican tyrant in waiting.

It's good to attempt a film that keeps a head on its shoulders, but need it have had so much talk on its lips? Tim Roth plays Cromwell. Roth is great at playing dangerous gadflies - like his foppish duellist in Rob Roy - but he is physically and dramatically undersized for this Gospel thunderer.

Dougray Scott makes General Lord Fairfax a plodding do-gooder, never the charismatic and tricky warriorpolitico playing both sides to his advantage. Rupert Everett, alone of the cast, suggests the measure of history as well as Charles I's narcissism, mulishness and insistent regal "divinity". With his beheading at the Palace of Whitehall, the film dies, too.

Olivia Williams's royalist Lady Fairfax is an under-written role. Her ladyship's deviousness exceeded even her husband's; here she is mainly deployed as the king's sympathetic care-giver.

The dialogue is top heavy with exposition ("Cromwell's bloody reign of terror in the name of freedom is turning the country against him") and seesaws between modern vernacular ("So you enjoyed chasing His Majesty around the country, Thomas?") and plausibly period ("What say we take some air?") .

At least someone saw the laugh-raising potential of using the more usual word "revolting" in the line "The troops are agitating, brother".

Sometimes, one feels the troops are outnumbered by the film's nine executive producers: this credit has become a joke.