One of my all time favorites.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

A very detailed battle scene, a devastating passion, both depicted in a believable way. Amongst these, however, a repetitive confrontation among brothers, stereotyped characters and moral tenets (more pertaining to 1965 than to Middle Ages, I fear) which fatally influence the ending.Actors are outstanding: real stars. Charlton Heston fills the screen and makes all his scenes memorable. Rosemary Forsyth is such a beauty that it is not hard to believe that men could have fought for her. I wonder if you noticed: in movies from those years, girls are often incredibly attractive.

I am a medieval historian and for my money this is one of the best films about the period, maybe the best. The background research was far superior to that done for the much better known El Cid, and the script is intelligent and carries you along with it. This film really captures the flavour of life in the north-west coastal regions of Flanders in the mid- eleventh century. The tower in particular is thoroughly authentic as is the emphasis on hunting. Terrific stuff. As for the battle scenes, if there are better medieval ones I'd like to hear about them. The Frisians are nothing if not persistent ... Unfortunately the impressive input by design, costumes and cinematography is let down by the wooden acting of Rosemary Forsythe, which rivals that of Sophia Loren in El Cid for sheer blandness. But that's the 60s for you. If only we could take the feisty and charismatic acting of today's actresses and combine it with the realism of the best of post- war Hollywood, before post-modern tongue-in-cheek humour and cgi effects took over. This movie is far from perfect but it is eminently watchable.

This is one - perhaps the only one - of old Sequoia Charlton Heston's best films. As an actor Heston is so wooden he makes Laurence Harvey look like a Mexican jumping bean yet here he is surrounded by a photogenic landscape and a cast and crew who exploit it to the full. It's a neat reverse take on the bog-standard 'epic' in which high-tech battles are everything and any 'love interest' is shoehorned into the background and given just enough screen time to justify the macho lads taking their wives and/or girl friends along; here we have a love story filling the frame so much so that we resent the skirmishes and full-scale battles that distract us from the star-crossed lovers who represent an unlikely pairing, a lowly peasant girl, who in reality would have been illiterate yet here is strangely eloquent, and the high-born nobleman as portrayed by Mr. Mahogany. It stands up well. Catch it if you can.

The War Lord stars Charlton Heston, Richard Boone, Rosemary Forsyth, Guy Stockwell, Maurice Evans, Niall MacGinnis, Henry Wilcoxon and James Farentino, amongst others. It's directed by future Oscar winning Director Franklin J. Schaffner (Best Director for Patton), and the screenplay is by PJohn Collier with the adaptation coming from the play, The Lovers, written by Leslie Stevens.The War Lord harks back to days of yore as we enter the 11th century and ancient Normandy. The film successfully brings the period down to the nitty gritty and doesn't glamorise either the characters or the way of life of the various social dwellers. Time has been afforded the pagan mythologies that existed back then, whilst the upper class' rights such as "droit de seigneur" (ius primae noctis) forms the back bone for our story as Heston's Duke falls for the Druid peasantry virgin (Rosemary Forsyth) he has claimed his right too, tho his inner conflict with the ways irks him so. Thanks to Schaffner the film manages to blend its dialogue heavy plot with some well crafted battle scenes, with the use of weaponry and tactics particularly impressive. You can see that this hasn't just been thrown together as a cash in historical epic featuring Chuck Heston. The cast are strong, particularly Boone and Stockwell, while Jerome Moross (score) and Russell Metty (cinematography) capture the time frame with skill.Rarely talked about in terms of historical epics, or even Heston epics come to that, The War Lord is however one of the more tightly written and thematically interesting movies from the genre. 7/10