TOWER OF SILENCE ** USA 2019 Dir: Erik Flynn Patton. 107 mins
Tower Of Silence is a noble departure into something a little bit different from the house of High Octane. I waited with anticipation as the good primal opening rolled into what became a strange blend of archaic fictional dark myth mixed with fighting fantasy type adventure.
As I stepped forward boldly like a brave adventurer I discovered that the movie quickly becomes a ‘Robin of Camelot’ escapade that dashes off on it’s quest involving Denzikel the weird paladin and his comrades Arcadia and Rahim in their bid to rescue their teacher Kae (played by Jenny Sterlin who is a dead ringer for Sue Johnston by the way!) from the evil clutches of the wicked necromancer Marwoleath (Christopher McAllister does a great Thulsa Doom type villain here too) and his feisty sidekick Groth the Black Knight. The plot is a simple and cliched one and I was amazed at how they could drag it out to over 100 minutes in all honesty.
The music and acting is of average standard and the actors do their best to entertain you, but the film becomes way too elaborate for itself and starts to over do the old light versus darkness angle that was done so well in films like Star Wars and John Boorman’s classic adventure Excalibur. The dialogue wasn’t all that clear and the Anglo American Olde English didn’t do it any favours either. In all fairness, the production did their best on what was obviously a low budget and I kept watching, but Captain Orson’s meagre army of troops did not look right in their period Roundhead helmets that did not befit such a fantasy tale.
However, out of pure intrigue I soldiered on to see how our chivalrous paladin endures his noble quest. However, a Conan-style backstory at the beginning would have helped the film a lot as the writing gets itself in a muddle at times which hampered my enjoyment somewhat. The combat sequences and some of the effects are well choreographed, but the lighting seemed way too bright for a story about the dark arts fighting to destroy the powers of light and overrun the world with a stream of unconvincing zombies. I have no idea where the ‘Marshmallow Man’ came from at the end either, but paladin killed it with his bright orbs anyway.
In my own humble opinion, films like this about swordplay and sorcery should contain a lot more fire, explosive action and bloodletting and sadly try as it might, Tower Of Silence did none of this very well at all, but if you’re after a reasonable film version of ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ then look no further than this mysterious and unknown land that offers a strange and brooding lack of bloodcurdling fantasy and original creativity.
Review by Nathan Sandiford