I'm amazed your reviewer liked this.

If you've always wanted to see someone cut another guy's arm off and hit him over the head with the soggy end, Ironclad is the film you've been waiting for all your life. (Yes, it does show exactly that.)

It's not only rubbish from a historical point of view; it’s also rubbish from a filmic point of view. It looks as though the makers read the Wikipedia entry on the siege of Rochester then bodged together a plot of sorts using the most tired old filmic tropes they could lay their hands on. Gallant defence against great odds by a tiny band of misfits, as in The Magnificent Seven or Seven Samurai? Tick (except that in those films there’s a reason why it’s only a tiny band of mistfits, but here it’s nonsensical). Old comrades get together for One Last Mission? Tick. Hero goes over the wall without a word to anyone, everyone thinks he’s deserting but no, he has gone to steal supplies from the enemy? Tick. The idealistic young lad is told “kill the women if the baddies get in” but can’t bring himself to do it? Tick. Bad guys smearing themselves with blue before battle just like in Braveheart (and never mind that they're not even supposed to be Picts)? Tick. Hero has a five-foot-long sword just like in Braveheart (and never mind that that's even more anachronistic for this story)? Tick.

Yawn, yawn, yawn. You don’t give a stuff about any of the characters, mainly because you don’t for a moment believe in them. It’s pure cartoon – but because the makers thought they were making a “gritty” “realistic” film, it’s a dull sludge-coloured cartoon. (The colour is so washed out it looks like a badly-degraded old print in need of restoration.)

If the makers had only realised halfway through just how stupid it was and thrown in a few Orcs, a Chinese swordfight heroine or Tim the Enchanter, and started sending it up rotten, Ironclad could have been quite a fun film. As it is - meh.