Subtitles:

English (SDH), none

Extras:

• Trailer (4:3/480i - 2:10)

Branagh adapted and directed this opus as well as starring, and he's found jobs for all his pals. Look, there's John Sessions mugging frantically at the back! Scurvy knave Bardolph is a be-latexed Briers; Mistress Quickly is a dusty Judi Dench; plus there's the grim spectacle of Emma Thompson bounding around in a red wig, gabbling Franglais. Coltrane is Falstaff: great idea, but as the fat man doesn't appear in the play, he's wedged in by way of fumbling flashbacks. Most of the scenes, including exteriors, could have been filmed on the stage of the National, and devices like Jacobi's Chorus, in anachronistic black greatcoat and woolly scarf, serve to accentuate the theatricality of the enterprise, as does the fact that Hal appears to be attacking France with 25 men. The fog of war is convincingly portrayed, though other scenes have an unmistakable whiff of the BBC production: the clip-clop-whinny sound effects, the sudden downpours, the swirling dry ice. Quibbles apart, Branagh succeeds in his blunt, robust portrayl of the Soldier-King, hauling the film along in the wake of his own gung-ho performance.

Kenneth Branagh has done it. Who is Kenneth Branagh? He's the young Belfast-born actor and director, best known here for his recent appearance in the ghastly ''Fortunes of War'' mini-series on television, who has transformed what initially seemed to be a lunatic dare into a genuine triumph. Mr. Branagh has made a fine, rousing new English film adaptation of Shakespeare's ''Henry V,'' a movie that need not apologize to Laurence Olivier's 1944 classic.

The Branagh version, opening today at the Paris Theater, is comparatively small. It's almost pocket-size, but it is big enough to encompass the emotional impact of the extraordinary text as acted by the mostly superlative actors.

In addition to Mr. Branagh, who plays the title role under his own direction, the cast includes Ian Holm as Fluellen, Brian Blessed as Exeter, Paul Scofield as the King of France, Judi Dench as Mistress Quickly, Derek Jacobi as the Chorus, Emma Thompson as Princess Katherine and Geraldine McEwan as her companion.

Gary Tooze

January 17th, 2015