Qui a tué le chevalier?

This movie is a very poor translation from the novel. Loosely based at best, with location and characters changed to the point where they are barely recognizable. The original plot of this story was intriguing and one that would make a great movie, had it been written with clarity and thought. However this version is designed with plenty of liberties taken on character development and plot continuity. Some I am sure would love the generous portion of nudity without reason or cause. Kate Beckinsale wandering around on the screen naked for no apparent reason is something I doubt we would see much of now. If you enjoy laughing over a miserable attempt to make a mystery, then by all means, rent this one, have some friends over, make popcorn, and have a cooler of beer on hand, and prepare to be entertained. But if you are looking for an edge of your seat afternoon of entertainment, look elsewhere.

A young art restoration specialist based in Barcelona is retained by an art gallery to restore a 17th century Dutch Masters paainting that has been in a private collection since it was created. The painting depicts an elderly nobleman playing cards with a younger man, while a noblewoman watches in the backgrounnd. All restorations include an xray, and this image reveals an underlying original painting on the same two men playing chess instead of cards. On the lower right, in Latin, are the words "Who Killed the Knight." The film reveals the names of the people in the painting, their relationships to each other, and how they relate to the current owners. This is a reasonably suspenseful film with qhite a few surprises. The performances are ot bad, although Kate Beckensale's inexperience is glaring. The story, however, more than compensates for this modest short coming, and the sight of the scantily clad beautiful English actress at age 21 is quite breathtaking.

A truly bad movie, from a generally good director like Jim McBride (I loved "Great Balls of Fire"). Based on a novel from Perez Reverte, this film is dull and uninteresting, and the only thing you can recommend from it is a * scene from Kate Beckinsale (48 minutes after the start, so press your fast forward button in your video).

Seeing the movie and seeing the review here in IMDb I am surprised at the low rating this movie has. It is not a perfect movie but it is fairly well played with a number of interesting characters and above all in my eyes a good deal of proper suspense on a level you don't see often anymore. The whole setting of the movie is pretty unusual which makes it all the more interesting. Art world, Murder, Theft, it's all in there in a relative well paced movie. It also has a great level of realism, you can actually imagine this to be real, it could have happened this way. Ignore the bad reviews, watch the movie with an open mind, in my opinion you can't really be disappointed.