KEVIN 'Waterworld' Reynolds' new film is a sword and sandals romance set in Britain after the Romans. It depicts servile English tribes being routed time and again by the Irish King Donnchadh.

Their villages are plundered, their women taken, and their men annihilated. In the vacuum left by the Romans, the cunning Donnchadh stirs discord, setting the English tribes fighting among themselves. So soon after the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, taking all this in requires some kind of mental paradigm shift. King Donnchadh, in the sublimely nasty drawl of David Patrick O'Hara, makes Michael Collins look like a weekend prankster.

The Celtic Irish could almost be an imperial power. No wonder then, some republicans have been trying so hard to take us back to the dark ages.

But where Tristan and Isolde can bend the mind, it doesn't stir the heart, nor does it get the adrenaline pumping. It sets out to be an epic story of revenge built around a tragic romance, yet falls short of both.

Ridley Scott, on the credits as executive producer, reminds us of what is missing. That man could make horse hooves sound like the opening salvo of an apocalypse, and his sword fights are exercises in white-knuckle anxiety. Tristan and Isolde has none of that pleasure. And its romance is doomed from the start, because James Franco and Sophia Myles cannot muster enough spark between them to smoke kindling, let alone make us believe that they are tragic passionate lovers.

Shot mainly in the west of Ireland and in the Czech Republic, Dean Georgaris' screenplay is based on the medieval Arthurian tale of starcrossed lovers Tristan and Isolde.

Wagner reanimated the old tale in his now famous opera, and here it is being pitched as a pre-Romeo and Juliet romance. Let us say that it is an unfair comparison.

Young Tristan, played by hardworking child actor Thomas Sangster, sees his chieftain parents slain before him by the Irish and is taken in as a son by the compassionate Lord Marke (Rufus Sewell). Later, the vengeful and grown-up Tristan (James Franco) plans guerrilla attacks on the Irish, one of which leaves him poisoned by the blade of Morholt (Graham Mullins), an Irish brute. Tristan, thought to be dead, is cast out into the Irish channel on a funeral boat. Isolde, the daughter of King Donnchadh, finds him on an Irish beach. Her maid, a wonderfully sour-faced Bronagh Gallagher, scowls but goes along with the plan to look after him in secret.

Neither knows each other's identity and Tristan vaguely tells her his parents died of ?a different type of Irish kindness". Isolde soon starts to pay more physical attention when applying her homemade ointments to Tristan's wounds and the two fall in love.

When Tristan gets back to Cornwall, he tells no one about his affair. Lord Marke, learning of a tournament where King Donnchadh offers his daughter in marriage to the winner, sends Tristan back to Ireland to win him a wife. Unbeknownst to Tristan, he's fighting for Isolde, and has to hand her over to Marke. Here, the real trouble begins.

Director Kevin Reynolds invests motive but scant character in his leading loves and Tristan makes less of the situation than he should. He battles with his conscience where instead he should be raging against the gods of fate. Isolde is bewildered by some of the choices he makes. So too, the viewer. Like Orlando Bloom in too weedy to be a battle hero, cast instead for his smouldering good looks.

And Reynolds too does little to illuminate what makes them fall for each other.

Is it Sarah Myles' passable Irish accent? The fact that Franco previously starred in Spiderman? Who knows. Strip back the period detail and what you have is a love affair as cold and empty as the castle walls in which it is contained.