[Frank Sheed]

the film “equates Catholicism with some sort of horror-movie cult, with scary close-ups of chanting monks and glinting crucifixes. There’s even a murderous Jesuit, played by Rhys Ifans like a Hammer-movie bad guy, or a second cousin to poor pale Silas from The Da Vinci Code.”

Just my cup of tea!

Papist-Romanist Franis Xavier Sheed

[Tax-chick]

Other flirtations with topicality in this pre-election year include assassins and conspirators praying secretly in a foreign language while plotting their murderous attacks, and the Machiavellian Sir Francis Walsingham (returning Geoffrey Rush) torturing a captured conspirator during an interrogation. (Tom Hollander, who costarred with Rush in the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, is running around somewhere in this picture, an odd juxtaposition in another film that ends with a sea battle with cannons.)

Heh, finally got around to reading the review. Much as Cate Blanchett annoys me, seeing the above actors in said roles might be worth a library checkout when I have to spend an evening sewing patches on everyone's Scout uniforms. (One can't drink and sew at the same time, without damage.)