Sam Neill Movies
One of the most famous film personalities to hail from the South Pacific, New Zealand-bred actor Sam Neill possesses the kind of reassuring handsomeness and soft-spoken strength that have made him an ideal leading man. Born Nigel Neill to a military family in Omagh, Northern Ireland, Neill relocated to New Zealand in 1953 at the age of six. There he picked up the nickname that would become his stage name, and attended both the University of Canterbury and the University of Victoria before beginning his acting career. Neill labored as a director/editor/screenwriter for the New Zealand National Film Unit for several years; he made his first movie in 1975 and scored his first significant film success four years later as the romantic lead opposite Judy Davis in director Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career. Shortly thereafter, Neill was brought to England under the sponsorship of star James Mason (who undoubtedly recognized the marked similarity between his acting style and Neill's).The actor's subsequent movie work included two memorable collaborations with actress Meryl Streep and director Fred Schepisi: Plenty (1985) and A Cry in the Dark (1988). Neill's British TV credits were highlighted by his starring role in the unorthodox espionage drama Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983), for which he won the British television BAFTA Best Actor award. He also began working on American films during the '80s, including the 1981 Omen sequel The Final Conflict (in which he demonstrated a considerable breadth of range as Satan's son Damien) and the 1987 TV miniseries Amerika. Neill also kept busy with projects down under, with perhaps his most memorable film being Dead Calm (1989), a masterfully crafted thriller that starred the actor as Nicole Kidman's husband.
Neill truly came to international prominence during the '90s (as evidenced by his guest spot as a cat burglar on an episode of The Simpsons). He experienced a bumper-crop year in 1993, portraying the raptor-fearing Dr. Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg's blockbuster Jurassic Park, before returning to New Zealand to portray Holly Hunter's taciturn, unexpectedly violent husband in The Piano (1993). He was also honored with the Order of the British Empire that same year. Neill continued to work on a wealth of diverse international projects throughout the rest of the decade, notably John Duigan's Sirens (1994), which cast him as a '30s bohemian artist; the Australian satire Children of the Revolution (1996), reuniting him with Judy Davis; Revengers' Comedies (1997), which cast him as a suicidal businessman; the acclaimed miniseries Merlin (1998), in which he played the titular wizard; Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer (1998), as the husband of Kristin Scott Thomas (the two had previously co-starred in Revengers' Comedies); and Bicentennial Man (1999), which featured the actor as the head of a family who purchases an uncannily human robot played by Robin Williams.
In addition to acting and managing a New Zealand winery, Neill directed an acclaimed 1995 documentary about the New Zealand film industry, Cinema of Unease: A Personal Journey by Sam Neill. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1993
"Rainbow Warrior" was the name of a real-life Greenpeace vessel, which embarked upon a worldwide pro-ecological mission in the early 1980s. While docked in New Zealand in 1985, the Rainbow Warior was destroyed by a bomb, and a crew member was killed. In this dramatization, Sam Neill and Jon Voight play two polar opposites-a hardbitten cop and a eco-activist, respectively--who team up to track down the bomber. Wisely, the script avoids making "save the whales"-type speeches, concentrating on the matters at hand in a no-frills fashion. Rainbow Warrior was released directly to video. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jon Voight, Sam Neill, (more)
Steven Spielberg's phenomenally successful sci-fi adventure thriller is graced by state-of-the-art special effects from the team of Stan Winston, Phil Tippett and Michael Lantieri from George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic. The film follows two dinosaur experts -- Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Dr. Ellie Sattler Laura Dern) -- as they are invited by eccentric millionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) to preview his new amusement park on an island off Costa Rica. By cloning DNA harvested from pre-historic insects, Hammond has been able to create living dinosaurs for his new Jurassic Park, an immense animal preserve housing real brachiosaurs, dilophosaurs, triceratops, velociraptors, and a Tyrannosaur Rex. Accompanied by cynical scientist Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), who is obsessed with chaos theory, and Hammond's two grandchildren (Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello), they are sent on a tour through Hammond's new resort in computer controlled touring cars. But as a tropical storm hits the island, knocking out the power supply, and an unscrupulous employee (Wayne Knight) sabotages the system so that he can smuggle dinosaur embryos out of the park, the dinosaurs start to rage out of control. Grant then has to bring Hammond's grandchildren back to safety as the group is pursued by the gigantic man-eating beasts. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sam Neill, Laura Dern, (more)
Chevy Chase stars, though not always visibly, as Nick Halloway, a low-level businessman with an acerbic approach to life and work, whose humdrum existence utterly bores him. Nick gets an unexpected jolt of excitement when, nursing a hangover, he's the only one not to evacuate an office building that becomes a disaster area after a mishap involving nuclear testing equipment. An unexpected by-product of the accident is that it turns the molecules of the building, as well as Nick and the clothes he's wearing, transparent. When a team of shady government agents, led by David Jenkins (Sam Neill), notices that a human has been turned invisible, they try to take him into custody, planning to use him as the most dangerous secret intelligence agent the world has ever known. Distrusting their motives, the frantic and confused Nick escapes, and quickly begins learning new information about his unusual condition, such pragmatic details as trying to sleep when he can see through his eyelids and any unprocessed food he eats will give him away. Soon, however, he discovers that the scientist in charge of the experiments (Jim Norton) has no idea how to return him to normal, and begins plotting how best to live a semblance of a normal life while steering clear of his pursuers. Nick involves a beautiful woman he met the night before the accident (Daryl Hannah) in his dilemma, and soon she too becomes a target. Memoirs of an Invisible Man was adapted from a book by H.F. Saint. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Chevy Chase, Daryl Hannah, (more)
- 1992
- R
This direct-to-video thriller stars Sam Neill as a British secret agent who wants to retire--much to the dismay of his superiors, who decide instead to have him killed. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sam Neill, Talisa Soto, (more)
- 1991
- PG
This award-winning TV production tells the true story of a heroic woman's underground operation to spirit Allied soldiers out of Nazi-occupied France. Her name is Mary Lindell, a British-born Red Cross nurse living in France with her two teenage children, Maurice and Barbé, by Lindell's marriage to Count de Melville. The story begins in Paris in 1940 when a downed British flier, Maj. James Legatt (Sam Neill), stumbles to a table at a sidewalk cafe. Dressed in a shin-to-shoulder overcoat and dizzy with fatigue, he plops into a chair. At a table nearby, Lindell (Judy Davis) notices his boots -- British issue and a dead giveaway. When German soldiers approach the flier, Lindell walks to his table and slaps him smartly, pretending he is her drunken husband. The ruse works. Lindell then takes Legatt to her home in a taxi and nurses him to health. During their time together, they fall in love -- chastely, without overtly disclosing their affection for each other. Using her feminine wiles and forceful personality to bamboozle SS hounds, she effects his escape back to England, then dedicates herself to rescuing other allies. All goes well until a flier botches his escape. An investigation and trial send Lindell to prison for nine months, which she barely survives. After her release, her son and daughter hide her and restore her to health, and Lindell goes back to work smuggling Allies across the border -- this time with the aid of a priest (Denholm Elliot) and Maj. Legatt, who tracks her activities from his headquarters in England. She eventually ends up in the Ravensbrück concentration camp north of Berlin, and in the conclusion of the production, viewers learn the ultimate fate of Lindell and Legatt. ~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Judy Davis, Sam Neill, (more)
- 1991
- PG
John Lone, the star of the Oscar-winning The Last Emperor (89), portrays a Chinese revolutionary in Shadow of China. Pursued by the Communists, Lone escapes to Hong Kong, where he builds up a multimillion dollar business enterprise. He hopes to use his international clout to effect changes in Mainland China, but he is defeated by revelations of his earlier underhanded business practices, and by the "dangerous" aspects of his previous political activities. Filmed on location, Shadow of China has its moments of violence, but none so extreme as to detract from the storyline. Also, John Lone proves again how his talents have often been wasted in less ambitious projects. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Lone, Koichi Sato, (more)
- 1991
- R
Wim Wenders' sprawling cyberpunk noir epic -- shot in no less than nine different countries -- is set in 1999 and stars Solveig Dommartin as Claire, a young Frenchwoman who comes into contact with a large sum of money stolen during a bank heist; in her travels she picks up a mysterious American hitchhiker (William Hurt), who himself steals some of the money before parting from her company. Upon discovering the theft, Claire sets out on his trail, with both a Hammett-styled German private eye (Rudiger Vogler) as well as her former lover, a novelist portrayed by Sam Neill, in tow. The hitchhiker is really Sam Farber, the son of an underground scientist (Max Von Sydow), and his mission is to travel the globe in order to acquire the funding necessary to develop the technology which will allow his blind mother (Jeanne Moreau) to "see" visual recordings of her family members; the second half of the film takes place largely in the Farbers' compound in the Australian Outback, where Sam, Claire and the others take refuge while attempting to bring the sight project to its fruition, in the meantime pondering earth's future in the wake of a nuclear disaster in outer space. Wenders' most ambitious film to date, budgeted at $23 million, Until the End Of the World is also among his most seriously flawed efforts -- despite a keen sense of cultural perception, a fascinating sci-fi take on life in the near-future and stunning Robby Muller cinematography, the picture never quite gels. Much of the blame seems to fall upon its distributors -- upon its wide release in 1991, the movie was drastically cut to a running time of 2 1/2 hours, resulting in a disjointed narrative that doesn't shift gears so much as grind them as the action moves from country to country. Still, while a three-hour version, issued on laserdisc in Japan, comes closer to realizing the full scope of Wenders' epic vision, rumors of a five-hour director's cut -- said to have been screened to thunderous applause at a handful of film festivals -- continue to persist, suggesting that a masterpiece may well exist here after all. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Hurt, Solveig Dommartin, (more)
- 1991
- R
In a futuristic world, the U.S. is ruled by a repressive government that bans most forms of media. As part of the enforcement, a cop (Billy Zane) is sent to the rebel state of Megaville on an undercover mission to infiltrate an unlawful media organization. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Billy Zane, J.C. Quinn, (more)
- 1990
Carl Fitzgerald (Sam Neill) is a shy, unassertive man, given to following orders from anyone around him who will take the trouble to boss him about, starting with his nagging mother. In this story, he is very much down on his luck and is forced to take a job as dishwasher in a Greek restaurant in Brunswick, his rundown neighborhood in Melborne. There, he swifly is hauled off to bed by an assertive young waitress. While he is with the girl, he accidentally kills his co-worker, a hysterically abusive and drug-dealing Turk, He calls on his old friend Dave for help in disposing of the man's body. The best solution Dave can come up with is to dump the body in another person's grave, but he manages to boss Carl around a lot in the process. And even Dave's wife gives Carl what-for, lambasting him for his overall uselessness. Somehow, despite his passivity, Carl manages to seem like the ultimate victor in all these confrontations. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sam Neill, Zoe Carides, (more)
The first of several films based on Tom Clancy's "Jack Ryan" technothrillers, Hunt for Red October stars Alec Baldwin as eccentric CIA analyst Ryan and Sean Connery as Soviet submarine commander Marko Ramius. Ramius sets the plot in motion when he murders his political adviser, burns his orders, and steers his sub Red October towards American waters, hoping to defect. The CIA, aware that the Red October was about to embark on an evasive mission to demonstrate its ability to avoid detection and fire its nuclear missiles upon U.S. installations, believes that Ramius is insane, and that he plans to start World War III. To cover their own behinds, the Russians back up the CIA's suspicion. Only Jack Ryan believes that Ramius' mission is not as apocalyptic as it seems -- and it is Ryan who is assigned to infiltrate the Red October to prove his theory. The sort of film that in an earlier era would have been called a "thinking man's thriller," The Hunt for Red October ushered in a new series of Hollywood-produced post-Cold War adventure films, including 1995's Crimson Tide. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, (more)
- 1989
With its release timed to coincide with celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution (1789-94), this film is actually two films released under one general title. The first, subtitled The Light Years, covers the period from the first stirrings of the revolution (e.g., the convocation of the Estates General (the pre-revolutionary parliament) by King Louis the Sixteenth, through to the moment when the King throws himself on the mercy of the National Assembly (the post-revolutionary legislature) in 1792. The second film, The Terrible Years, covers the time from the King's execution through the years of "the terror," during which anyone might be executed by the newly invented guillotine, concluding with the execution of the firebrand Robespierre and the end of the terror in 1794). Every scene in this huge international production (with an international cast) was filmed once each in English and French, although certain actor's roles were dubbed in later. Some of the better known performers appearing include Claudia Cardinale, Peter Ustinov, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Jane Seymour, and Jean-Francois Balmer. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Klaus Maria Brandauer, Jane Seymour, (more)
Grieving over the death of their son, a married couple decide to take a long yachting trip for relaxation's sake. Their journey takes a dark turn, however, when they rescue a young man from a drifting vessel. The couple soon discover that the other ship's crew had been brutally murdered by their new passenger, and find themselves in a battle of wits against this violent sociopath. Interestingly, a previous attempt had been made at adapting the novel that inspired this film by none other than Orson Welles; footage from his unfinished version, known as The Deep, can be seen in the documentary Orson Welles: The One-Man Band. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman, (more)
A barely recognizable Meryl Streep plays the real-life Lindy Chamberlain, who for a long period in the early 1980s was the most hated woman in Australia. While visiting the Ayers rock monument in the Outback with her husband Michael (Sam Neill), Lindy notices a dingo creeping into the tent where her baby lies sleeping. Seconds later, the horrified woman discovers that her child is gone. Despite Lindy's anguished insistence that the dingo killed her baby, the Australian public is of the opinion that Lindy herself is the murderer. This lynch-mob atmosphere is fueled by the press, which insists upon crucifying the Chamberlains in print on a daily basis. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lewis Fitz-Gerald, Meryl Streep, (more)
- 1988
A young woman learns that she has a lethal, rare kind of cancer. This fact-based, heart-wrenching made-for-TV drama chronicles her struggle to cope with her own personal feelings and those of her family. She then begins looking for alternative ways to treat her disease while her husband deals with his denial. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anne Archer, Sam Neill, (more)
- 1987
As the brainchild of writer-director-producer Donald Wrye, the 14 1/2 hour ABC movie event Amerika marked one of the most expensive and controversial miniseries in the history of prime time television when it bowed over the course of seven nights in February of 1987. Regarded as something of a conservative counterpoint to Nicholas Meyer's The Day After (which screened on ABC, four years prior and allegedly demonstrated leftwing bias - prompting very outspoken criticisms from Republican pundit Ben Stein), this $40 million production imagines a dystopian future set in the late 1990s. When the drama opens in May of 1997, the Russians have effectively won the Cold War by wresting control over the United States, with the backing of a U.N. Peacekeeping Force. Although the initial takeover was not annihilative or even apparently violent, the consequences are overwhelming; a puppet leader holds court in the Oval Office, the American economy has fallen to pieces with Midwesterners lining up for vegetables, and gulag prisons are scattered across the land; meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of refugees have hit the countryside and wander aimlessly. The majority of the action unfurls in a rural Nebraska community, where onetime antiwar protester and presidential candidate Devin Milford (Kris Kristofferson) has just been released from a gulag, and now discovers his family farm being whittled away by the Russians. Meanwhile, his childhood friend Peter Bradford has somehow landed a position in the government hierarchy and finds himself being drawn in more deeply. Across the land, Russian stormtroopers engage in acts of violent intimidation, such as burning farmhouses and brainwashing abductees, while the Russian occupiers systematically maneuver on the political front to bring the once-powerful republic tumbling down. The supporting cast includes Christine Lahti, Wendy Hughes, Sam Neill, Armin Mueller-Stahl and many others; the title, of course, was intended to reflect "America" as modified to a slightly more Russian spelling. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kris Kristofferson, Wendy Hughes, (more)
- 1986
Christina Stead's novel For Love Alone was a best-seller in Australia, but remains essentially unknown to the outside world. The same can be said for this 1986 film version, likewise a homegrown Australian product. Set in the 1930s, the film stars Helen Buhay as a starry-eyed young girl chafing under the oppressive attitudes of society in general and her father in particular. She kicks over the traces to enter into a romance with college Latin professor Hugo Weaving. Still not realizing that Weaving considers her a pleasant diversion and nothing more, Helen nearly misses out on a chance for happiness with liberal-minded banker Sam Neill. Once she's settled down with Neill, the idealistic Buhay is smitten by another aesthete, poet Huw Williams. Neill encourages this affair, hoping that Buhay will eventually realize that there's more to true love than mere sexual impulsiveness. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Helen Buday, Sam Neill, (more)
- 1986
- R
Originally titled The Umbrella Woman, The Good Wife is set in an Australian lumber town in 1939. Marge Hills (Rachel Ward), the bored wife of kindly-but-dull Sonny Hills (Bryan Brown) begins dreaming of outside romances. She unexpectedly gets her wish in the form of Sonny's much-younger brother Sugar (Steven Vidler), whom Sonny cheerfully offers to his wife as a surrogate bedmate. Given this curious arrangement, one wonders why Marge is so upset when she is propositioned by handsome stranger Neville Gifford (Sam Neill). Eventually, Gifford sleeps with every other woman in town but Marge. Fed up with the unimaginative lovers in her own house, Marge finally gives in to Gifford, arousing the jealousy not of the cloddish Sonny, but of the immature Sugar. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rachel Ward, Bryan Brown, (more)
- 1986
This two-part, four-hour TV miniseries was adapted from the same-named 1984 novel by Arthur Hailey. Pamela Sue Martin headed the huge cast as Celia Gray, a young woman who rose from humble drug store clerk to become the head of a major pharmaceutical manufacturing firm during the 1950s and 1960s. Along the way, of course, Celia met with formidable opposition from the all-male medical establishment, and consequently, her private life was often a mess. Also on hand were two other TV stalwarts, Patrick Duffy as Dr. Andrew Jordan and Dick Van Dyke as Sam Hawthorne. Presented as part of the syndicated Operation Prime Time dramatic anthology (one of many pre-Fox efforts spearheaded by a consortium of independent TV stations to establish a "fourth network"), Strong Medicine was first made available on April 21, 1986, though most local markets did not run the property until May. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1985
Many cinematic versions of this story which first appeared in 1889 (authored by Rolf Boldrewood) have been produced, the first was an Australian film dating back to 1907, and this mid-'80s interpretation is also an Australian release. The focus is on Captain Starlight (Sam Neill) and his gang of outlaws who terrorize the countryside in the late 19th century. Dick and Jim Marsten (Steven Vidler and Christopher Cummins) leave home to join Captain Starlight's gang of brigands, following fast on their father's own footsteps. Opposing the Marstens and the rest of the gang is the determined Sir Frederick Morringer (Robert Grubb). Love interests, arguments, and episodic adventures fill the time until the inevitable final showdown with the law. Originally intended as a series on television, the sequences have been cut to fit into a continuous, 2 1/2-hour movie -- unfortunately deleting background on the main protagonists and their lovers. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sam Neill, Steven Vidler, (more)
- 1985
Adapted from the phenomenally popular best-seller by Jeffrey Archer, the three-part, seven-hour CBS miniseries Kane & Abel is the tale of two tycoons -- one a self-made man, one born into wealth -- who both came into the world on the very same day. The illegitimate son of a Polish baron, Abel Rosnovski (Peter Strauss) is forced to fend for himself from childhood. Escaping from Siberia during WWI, Abel emigrates to America, where he builds up a multimillion-dollar hotel business. Meanwhile, Boston brahmin William Lowell Kane (Sam Neill) is carefully groomed to take his place in both society and the financial world, succeeding on both counts in the banking business. Though Abel and Kane might have become friends in any other circumstances, an accidental slight on Kane's part earns him the undying enmity of a vengeful Abel -- and thus is set in motion a tense, feud-driven power struggle that will consume both their lives for the next 25 years. Filmed on-location in Canada, England, and France, Kane & Abel originally aired from November 17 to 19, 1985. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Strauss, Sam Neill, (more)
Plenty boasts a cast of actors ranging from John Gielgud as an ethical and caustic senior diplomat to Meryl Streep as Susan Traherne, a woman looking for solace and a decent life in the aftermath of World War II. After World War II has ended, along with her work in the French Resistance movement and an idealized love affair with a soldier, Susan finds jobs in the business and diplomatic worlds. Her life slowly disintegrates as she tries and fails to have a child then marries diplomat Raymond Brock (Charles Dance) and suffers further emotional decline as her rather conventional marriage eventually becomes cool and finally, alienating. Against Susan's difficulties are tumultuous events in the background -- the Suez Canal crisis and Middle East developments among them. David Hare adapted the screenplay from his successful stage play which first opened in 1978. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Meryl Streep, Charles Dance, (more)
- 1984
Produced on behalf of the HBO cable service, The Blood of Others is a rare venture into English-language filmmaking by Claude Chabrol. Set during World War II, the film stars Jodie Foster and Michael Ontkean as a pair of French resistance fighters. If you can swallow that, then you'll accept New Zealand native Sam Neill as a German businessman. Chabrol's wife Stephane Audran costars as Gigi, while other prominent members of the cast include Alexandra Stewart, Jean-Pierre Aumont and Micheline Presle. Oh, yes, the plot: based on a novel by Simone de Beauvoir, The Blood of Others concerns Jodie Foster's confused loyalties: should she continue in her underground activities, or succumb to the charms of the seemingly civilized Neill? This French-Canadian coproduction was originally telecast August 23, 1984. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jodie Foster, Michael Ontkean, (more)
Sam Neill stars as British super spy Sidney Reilly, the United Kingdom's top espionage agent during the Russian Revolution who found himself serving many sides in the line of duty, in this collection of the complete run of the acclaimed British television series Reilly: Ace Of Spies. This set includes the 90-minute pilot episode for the series, An Affair With A Married Woman, as well as all eleven episodes of the show's regular run: Prelude To War, The Visiting Fireman, Anna, Dreadnoughts and Crosses, Dreadnoughts and Double-crosses, Gambit, Endgame, After Moscow, The Trust, The Last Journey, and Shutdown.
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- 1983
The 1950s in Ireland comes alive in the transformation of two "country girls" from Irish schoolchildren in a strict convent to teenagers needing to get away from their families. The teens escape to the big city, and the contrast to their past is handled with both pathos and humor. The two leads are excellently interpreted by (Maeve Germaine and Jill Doyle). ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sam Neill, Maeve Germaine, (more)
The classic adventure novel by Sir Walter Scott, which covers the same ground as the various Robin Hood legends, becomes this impressive television production, boasting a well-heeled British cast, a robust pace, and solid production values. Wilfred of Ivanhoe (Anthony Andrews) is a young Saxon knight of 12th century England. Returning home from fighting in the Crusades alongside King Richard the Lionheart (Julian Glover), Ivanhoe finds that the nation is now under the dictatorial thumb of the king's brother, Prince John (Ronald Pickup) and the prince's thuggish Norman cohorts. He is also dismayed to learn that his longtime love, Lady Rowena (Lysette Anthony), has been betrothed to another man. Determined to restore throne and country to Richard, the courageous Ivanhoe has soon run afoul of those in power, though a few rebellious types like Robin Hood (David Robb) are on his side. Ivanhoe also finds love again, with the lovely Jewish girl Rebecca (Olivia Hussey), though she and her wise father Isaac of York (James Mason) face Norman persecution for their religious faith. Ivanhoe also finds a deadly rival in the cynically twisted knight Brian de Bois-Guilbert (Sam Neill). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Mason, Anthony Andrews, (more)
