Cinematic second-fiddle Sean Bean takes centre stage in this medieval tale of plague and sorcery...

I haven't exhaustively checked his profile, I admit, but I can't remember Sean Bean headlining a movie since the Brit football saga When Saturday Comes (1996). He's fought James Bond in Goldeneye (1995), been the evil doc in Michael Bay's The Island (2005), kinda redeemed himself in the Rings trilogy, but otherwise re-branded himself a stalwart second banana in Hollywood. Now, however, he stars in Black Death, a new movie from Revolver set in the time of plague, wherein one medieval village seems oddly immune to the biological horror rampaging the world...and our hero wants to know why...

The press-release reads thus:

From Christopher Smith, director of cult hits Creep, Severance and Triangle, comes a brutal and terrifying epic that guarantees to chill the blood and stir the soul.

In a plague-ridden medieval England, Osmund (Eddie Redmayne), a young monk, is charged in leading the fearsome knight Ulrich (Sean Bean), and his group of mercenaries to a remote village where the inhabitants are unaffected by the deadly pestilence. Their quest is to hunt down a necromancer - someone able to bring the dead back to life.

Their journey is long and brutal; encountering deadly bandits, vicious witch-burnings and their own impeding sense of doom. Though it’s upon entering the village that their true horror begins...

Medieval epics still stand, for a certain generation, in the shadow not only of Monty Python And The Holy Grail but also John Boorman's Excalibur (1981) - this armour-clad outing certainly looks gritty enough to fit the canon, and has a LotR vibe going for it, not only in the casting.

Black Death is released in the UK on 11th June, classified 15, and as 'horror'.

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