The Rising Hawk

In the 13th century, common folks escape the bloodshed from the Mongol invasion in Kyiv for the safety of the Carpathian Mountains. Maksim (Alex MacNicoll) saves Myroslava (Poppy Drayton) and she convinces her powerful father Tuhar Vovk (Tommy Flanagan) to attend a celebration in Maksim's settlement led by Maksim's father Zakhar Berkut (Robert Patrick). Tuhar looks down upon and distrusts these mountain folk. After an attack, Maksim and his brother rescue many prisoners and in the process, kill the son of Mongol general Burunda Khan. The Khan intends on revenge.

This is an Ukrainian sword and sandal historical drama. MacNicoll has the looks but he does need a bit more charisma to lead. Drayton does have both. It is odd that the story and production is Ukrainian but most of the actors are English westerners. It is what it is. It's a fine B-movie. It's too long at just over two hours. There are sections in the second half which drags. This can't be the highest Khan. Also the action is a little over the top. I do like some of it and that's enough to keep my attention. It's barely passable.

I hadn't heard about this 2019 movie titled "The Rising Hawk" from writers Rich Ronat and Yaroslav Voytseshek prior to sitting down now late in 2020 to watch it. So I wasn't sure what I should be expecting from the movie. But I have to admit that I sort of feared that the movie would be another one of those movies that have a really interesting cover/poster and the movie itself turns out to be utter rubbish.

So I am relieved to say that "The Rising Hawk" was actually an entertaining and enjoyable movie. Sure, the movie's plot and storyline was very generic and actually rather predictable. But the movie's action, costumes, props and sets more than made up for the shortcomings in terms of script and storyline.

I enjoyed the cast that were in the movie, with the only familiar faces being Tommy Flanagan and Robert Patrick for me. But I will say that all people on the cast list actually performed quite well. Andrey Isaenko, playing Petro, really had a great on-screen charisma and added something memorable to the movie with his character.

There is a good amount of action throughout the course of the movie, which definitely also helped to bring enjoyment to the movie.

My rating of "The Rising Hawk" is a six out of ten stars. While the movie was entertaining and watchable, I doubt that this is a movie that I will ever watch a second time, because the plot and storyline just didn't have enough contents to it to support more than a single veiwing.

Of course the plot was a bit stereotypic and definitely predictable. But if you like medieval kind of movies without expecting that everything is perfectly historically, you will like it. But the blacksmith has to be the strongest man that ever lived ;-)

They had a lot of good thing going,but it was ruined by horrible shaky camera work, some obvious directing problem, acting issues, at times bad fight scenes( some were good)script issues and so forth. Director and camera people should learn to use the camera for their next flick as it was one of the worst I've seen in many years. With a bit more attention to detail and a bit better cast, it would've rivaled all the Hollywood big production studios. The known actors did a good job,but the rest were less than stellar. Lot's of cliches, as another reviewer said. Questionable stunts. Some reviewers gave it a 10 seem to be "patriotic" and not truthful and the current 7.1 rating is certainly not real,but I can see it settling to 5-6 over time - to what it really deserves.

PS. the best actor in this movie was the swordsmith...

As pointed out by others the plot and screenplay doesnt match.But still a good effort in recreating the struggles that the protagonist and his clan went through during that era of history.