Movie Review: Alicia Vikander Explores an English Queen’s Role in the Historical Drama ‘Firebrand’

Remember years ago when Alicia Vikander said she had plans to win an Oscar, which caused people to scoff at her for daring to believe she could win so early in her career? She was quickly proved right when she won Best Supporting Actress for Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl (2015). And then we barely heard anything else from her.

Of course, if you look up the Swedish actress’ career, you’ll see Vikander continued to act, but nothing made much of an impression since her big breakthrough. Her biggest project was starring as Lara Croft in Roar Uthaug’s Tomb Raider (2018) reboot that ended up being a one-off, as well as receiving good reviews for her performances as a young Gloria Steinem in Julie Taymor’s The Glorias (2020) and as the lead on Olivier Assayas’ TV version of “Irma Vep” (2022).

How can someone with so much talent, hype and star quality be everywhere and nowhere at once?

In her new film, Karim Aïnouz’s Firebrand, Vikander portrays Queen Katherine Parr, the sixth and final wife of King Henry VIII (Jude Law) during 1540s England. While the King is away on business, we see an independent Katherine content to run the castle and take over government duties on his behalf.

At the same time, the Queen is a devout Catholic who believes God’s plan for her is to change her husband’s mind about his new Church of England. This is just as he sentences her childhood best friend, Anne Askew (Erin Doherty), to death for preaching that no king is more powerful than the Lord.

Eddie Marsan and Sam Riley play Henry’s former brothers-in-law while Junia Rees co-stars as Princess Elizabeth, the oldest of Katherine’s stepchildren, who admired her. Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth and Rosanne Flynn adapt Firebrand’s screenplay from Elizabeth Fremantle’s 2013 historical fiction novel “Queen’s Gambit.”

If anything, Aïnouz’s feature proves Vikander is well suited for these kind of costume dramas, as she was a decade ago in Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair (2012). She fits right into this type of regal Euro setting and is the highlight here as she typically is. It would be great if this was the beginning of a legitimate comeback for the star. However, he rest of Firebrand is a bit of a misfire, so to speak.

Katherine being both political and religious is a very intriguing idea, and the picture starts out strongly as we see her raise the young royals while overseeing the country. But as soon as Law’s Henry enters the picture, it’s like a switch is flipped.

Either the director or the writers don’t know how to balance Katherine as both strong and a victim of her tyrannical husband, because they resort to just showing her as weak and vulnerable. The king himself feels belongs in another movie as Law spends his whole screen time chewing the scenery as a one-note villain.

Along with a score that sounds like something out of a suspense thriller and some hysterically hokey fake beards on many of the men — particularly Riley — Firebrand should be iron hot, but is instead lukewarm.