Nostradamus (1994)

Tchéky Karyo really doesn’t impress very much as he takes on the role of one of history’s most enigmatic characters for this good looking but lacklustre costume drama. Set against a backdrop of plagues and widespread religious fervour in 16th century France, we follow this man who adopts a less superstitious and more scientific approach to dealing with many of the contagions that routinely decimated the population - rich and poor, high and low. Constantly fearful of a vengeful church - especially as he purports to be able to see the future, he allies with “Scaliger” (F. Murray Abraham) and heads to the court where he ends up with the ear of both Catherine de Medici (Amanda Plummer) and her ten year old son, Charles IX. It’s over-scripted and disappointingly pace-less, I felt, and though Rutger Hauer manages to raise the temperature of the drama a bit as the mad monk and Abraham likewise enlivens things, the whole thing rather lumbers along in a similar but less entertaining vein to the contemporaneous “Cadfael” mysteries that were on television at the time. Nostradamus was clearly a man who lived his life to the full, sailed very close to the wind and was no stranger to peccadilloes but somehow this really only tips the iceberg of his chronology and tries to squeeze far too much into two hours that might better have been made as a more detailed, better cast and characterful mini-series. It’s not terrible, but is instantly forgettable.