The Dovekeepers

The past two nights I watched the two part movie The Dovekeepers. It's based on a book and produced by the people who made Son of God and The Bible. The movie is about the women who survived the siege of Masada. Part one was mostly adultery. All that adultery didn't sit well with me. It would be alright if we establish ONE of the characters as having an affair in the beginning and then she reunites with the man years later, but both women habitually seduce married men, and those men have a habit of dying, and then the women go on to seduce even more married men without caring a bit about the men who just died. This is the story of the last stand of the Jews against Roman oppression, and the two narrators are notorious whores? Whose idea was that?



Let's begin at the beginning. This woman – claimed to be a witch – is having an affair with a married man who happens to be the best warrior in the whole of Judea, and he has a sexy goatee and black leather pants to prove it (I didn't know they had black leather in AD 70, but it looks really cool, I'll admit that). She has a daughter by him who turns out to be transsexual and lives as a boy. She is cast out of the city and has to live with a nomad who has a son with her. The son is a moron and a weakling and his older sister has to take up the slack of fighting and killing people with a bow and arrow like Robin Hood or Robin Hood knock-off girl movie (Hunger Games). The witch leaves with both children to go to Masada, never to see the nomad man again.



Meanwhile there is an red head girl who has a deeply troubled father because her mother died in childbirth. She has an older brother who is literally the only likable character in the whole movie. The brother goes to Masada after wounding a Roman general while he's out playing Assassin's Creed IRL. Red head and the father then leave months later, I guess, to go to Masada also to find the brother. On the way she has sex with a married man literally five feet from his wife. I'm not making this up. This guy wakes up the red head, who he just met, and says something like "let's go over there, five feet away, and have sex right next to my wife." Then like a week later he and his wife die from some unidentified disease, probably an STD that he got from the red head and then later gave to his wife during make up sex. "Hey, honey, she means nothing to me, I was just really drunk last night and thought she was you. Very drunk." (feel free to use that excuse if you want.) Red head and the father make it to Masada and she gets a job sweeping dove poop. That's literally the only time we see doves in the whole movie, in two scenes where she's sweeping poop.



The tranny is in love with the red head's brother and they frequently run off together to have sex in like warehouses and other places. The witch goes to the cistern to have sex with the chief. I guess no one is worried about sperm getting into the water supply and then several women getting pregnant from bathing. At least half the movie is sex.



A Roman slave – a giant Norwegian man – is taken prisoner by the Jews at Masada and red head seduces him. Red head gives birth to a baby conceived by the dead man who had sex with her one time and the Norwegian man raises the baby as his own, which is awfully nice of him considering that both the Romans and the Jews treat him like a slave. Red head convinces the Norwegian man to go back to Norway in the cover of night but he gets captured and put in jail.



End of part 1.



Part 2. Stuff actually happens in part 2. They really could have made this a single movie. There's so much filler because the book on which it is based is so long.



The witch helps cure the chief's wife's tuberculosis or something and then the wife tries to incite a riot and have the witch killed, but the witch uses her literal magic and causes a rain storm and the mob all of a sudden forgets about killing her.



The witch teaches the red head how to make poison from snake skin and leaves. This is Chekhov's gun, remember it.



The wimpy brother goes off on a raid to kill Romans Assassin's Creed style and the other brother yells at him because he's not even beta and he's going to get everyone killed. He gets stabbed in the leg and cries like a little baby and the other brother carries him back and the witch hates him even though he literally saved his life. The tranny has to dress like the wimpy brother and go off on raids in the future, but she's like Robin Hood and can actually kill people. On another raid, after she's killed like ten Roman soldiers with perfect headshots she sees the other brother – her lover – kill one of the soldiers' wife and daughter, and since only women's lives have value she then hates him forever.



Back at Masada the tranny goes to see the quiet man who saved her life during the raid she wasn't supposed to take part in, and the man says "I'm quiet because my wife died and I promised her to get revenge against the Romans. And I promised her I would never have sex again." Then the two of them have sex right there. I kid you not.



The witch is pregnant again with another kid by the chief. This was thrown in to show just how fertile these people are, I guess.



Red head goes to see the Norwegian and gives him a bow and arrows and tells him to escape, again. I'm not sure what happens to him but we never see him again.



Red head overhears the witch talk to the chief that the chief is injured and needs help when he goes on another raid. Red head makes poison and poisons the Romans secretly and at least fifty of them die and when the Jews get there they don't need to kill anyone because they're all dead already and they're like "woah, how did that happen?"



Other brother confronts tranny and asks her why she hates him but she won't answer him. He gets rough but he lets her go off because he doesn't want to hurt her. He's probably the one good character in the whole movie, not counting the baby who doesn't do anything.



There's a tender moment where the father is playing with the baby and red head walks in and he apologizes for mistreating her because he was heartbroken over his wife.



The Romans have built a siege tower and are breaking down the walls of Masada. They have catapults that launch flaming boulders and set the city on fire. They dunk the boulders in clear liquid that is super flammable and didn't exist back then, but Hollywood adores fire. Even though we've seen maybe two Jews getting killed by the Romans up to this point because the Jews have super ninja powers and can kill a million Romans, the Jews are worried that the Romans are about to rush in and kill everyone. The chief comes up with the plan that everyone die so that the Romans don't have the pleasure of killing anyone. Other brother goes off and kills the tranny and then the quite man kills him. Though I just saw it I don't remember how the quiet man dies. The chief begs the witch to kill him and she does and then she, red head, the baby, and the wimp go off to the cistern to hide while everyone else dies. The next day the Romans break into the cistern and capture them and take them to Josephus to tell what happened inside the city. Hearing everything they've been through Josephus lets them go free. The end.



The movie was terrible, unnecessarily long, and I didn't like any of the characters except the designated bad guy brother. I didn't like how the witch literally had magic powers, I didn't like how men were portrayed as utter crap and the adulterous women who seduce everyone were held up as heroes who "don't even need a man." I don't like how every problem but one was caused by the adulterous women and they get a pass like they did nothing wrong. This was like a Harlequin sex fantasy fourth grade reading level pulp book (which it was). It was just crap. Every time I thought I would like a character that character then went off and did something contemptible.



I know the history of Masada. The real history is the only thing that put any real emotion into the last 20 minutes. It is sad what they went through, and the Romans really were the villains in real life, but the characters in the movie were so bad I was actually rooting for the Romans! I don't even know how to rate this movie. I want to say maybe 45/100.