PLUNKETT AND MACLEANE

A movie review
By Lianna

Stand and deliver!

Ladies and gentlemen!  I crave your attention, but not so much as I crave your valuables!

What fun it is to watch this rip-roaring, swashbuckling, adventure yarn, and I watch it over and over again!  Definitely one of my favorites (I don’t actually have a favorite film but if I did, this one would be in contention for that spot)! Unlike most of the crap on the silver screen today, this movie has romance, action, humor, whit, a good plot, an intelligent adult script (Wow! Intelligent! Adult! What a concept!), and fantastic characters (two of my FRP/D&D characters are based on Plunkett and Macleane)!

I’m usually a stickler for historic accuracy and this film is full of anachronisms (non-period dialog, techno music, Rochester’s eyebrow piercing, modern style dancing), but it never claimed (even thought it a very loosely based on two real life highwaymen) to be a historical representation of 18th century England (1745 to be exact).  One could assert that it is actually a contemporary movie disguised as a costume piece.  I might even say that stretching the historical truth (which you can investigate it here:
http://www.stand-and-deliver.org.uk/highwaymen/maclaine_and_plunkett.htm ) makes this film even better…more of a fun and exciting adventure/romp than a stiff period piece.  I must also remark that while this film isn’t, for the most part, historically true, it does give a very accurate impression of the grit, filth, social structure and spirit of the 18th century.

To take a line from the film, “It was fantastic and I had a bloody good laugh.”

While not everyone may like this film as much as I do, in my book

Plunkett and McCleane is well worth five wyveries!