Lionheart (1987 film)

Lionheart

Promotional film poster
Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
Produced by Talia Shire
Stanley O'Toole
Screenplay by Menno Meyjes
Richard Outten
Story by Menno Meyjes
Starring Eric Stoltz
Gabriel Byrne
Music by Jerry Goldsmith
Cinematography Alec Mills
Edited by David Bretherton
Richard Haines
Distributed by Orion Pictures
Release dates
  • August 14, 1987 (1987-08-14)
Running time
104 minutes
Language English

Lionheart (also known as Lionheart: The Children's Crusade) is a 1987 adventure film directed by Academy Award-winner Franklin J. Schaffner. The film is produced by Talia Shire and Stanley O'Toole. Shire's brother, Francis Ford Coppola, initially planned to direct the film but instead opted to be executive producer along with Shire's husband, Jack Schwartzman. The screenplay was written by Menno Meyjes and Richard Outten from a story by Meyjes. Oscar-winning composer Jerry Goldsmith wrote the score.

Loosely based on the historical Children's Crusade, the story follows an exiled young knight, played by Eric Stoltz, who leads a band of orphans to join the Third Crusade with King Richard the Lionheart while protecting the children from the Black Prince (Gabriel Byrne), a disillusioned crusader turned child slave trader (not to be confused with the real-life Edward, the Black Prince).

Cast

Production

Lionheart was a big budget movie filmed in Hungary and Portugal utilizing several castles and hundreds of Slavic children hired as extras. The movie was Schaffner’s penultimate film and represented the final collaboration between the director and his friend Jerry Goldsmith (together they previously worked on Planet of the Apes, Patton, Papillon, and The Boys from Brazil).

Music

In 1987 Varèse Sarabande released the soundtrack on two separate albums, with Jerry Goldsmith conducting the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra; in 1994 the label released a one-disc edition as Lionheart: The Epic Symphonic Score featuring all of Volume 1 and six tracks from Volume 2.

Volume One

Volume Two

Lionheart: The Epic Symphonic Score

Release

The distributor, Orion Pictures, delayed its theatrical release but when the film was finally shown in August 1987 in Canada, the limited release garnered negative reviews. Therefore, the movie was largely unseen until being shown on pay television and finally released on VHS tape and DVD.

Leonard Maltin’s review is a rare complimentary one: “Richly produced, well acted, with a superb Jerry Goldsmith score, it’s a shame this sincere, if slight, film received almost no theatrical release.”[1] Variety's reviewer watched the film at the Cineplex Odeon Canada Square theatre in Toronto on August 18, 1987. The review appeared in the August 26, 1987 issue describing the movie as "a flaccid, limp kiddie adventure yarn with little of its intended grand epic sweep realized" and accurately predicted that the movie "should head straight for the home video shelves".[2][3]

Home media

Warner Home Video brought out a VHS tape in July 1994 and issued a DVD in December 2009 on the Warner Archives label.

References

  1. Maltin, Leonard. Leonard Maltin’s 2009 Video Guide. p. 807
  2. Variety's Film Reviews 1987-1988, volume 20. R.R. Bowker, 1991, unpaged but see August 26, 1987.
  3. "Lionheart". Variety. Extract of a review from 1987. Retrieved November 22, 2011. Check date values in: |date= (help)

See also

External links

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