Roland Joffe, the British director who peaked with “The Killing Fields” and “The Mission” in the 1980s, returns to big-scale filmmaking with this disappointing conflation of fiction with the life of Josemaria Escriva (Charlie Cox) — the priest who founded the controversial, secretive Catholic organization Opus Dei, best-known for its unflattering portrayal in “The Da Vinci Code.”
Escriva, who was canonized in 2002, is unqualifiedly and uninterestingly portrayed here as a saint. In case we don’t get the point, his selflessness is contrasted with a made-up boyhood friend, an arrogant aristocrat (Wes Bentley of “American Beauty”) who infiltrates a communist brigade to spy for the fascists during the Spanish civil war.
This may be the most politically confusing movie about that conflict since “For Whom the Bell Tolls” — I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where Escriva stood. And forget about the inside dope on Opus Dei (the producer is a member). There are some good battle scenes, though, in this Spanish-backed production, which is performed in often awkward English.
On the battlefield, Bentley’s performance tends to be overshadowed by the more charismatic Rodrigo Santoro, as a rebel leader with whom Bentley competes for the romantic attention of a Hungarian freedom fighter (Olga Kurylenko).
“There Be Dragons” is bookended by hokey scenes of Bentley (with terrible makeup) as a dying old man. Dougray Scott has the truly thankless task of playing his unhappy journalist son. Even actor’s actor Derek Jacobi, as a Jewish factory owner, is wasted in this international muddle of a movie.