Synopsis
With Fire and Sword (Ogniem i mieczem, 1999) is a sweeping Polish historical epic you can watch online on iFILM. Jerzy Hoffman adapts the opening novel of Henryk Sienkiewicz's beloved trilogy, set across the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the 1600s.
The steppe is ablaze. Cossack colonel Bohdan Khmelnytsky (Bohdan Stupka) rouses the Zaporozhian host after a Polish lord whips his son to death, and Crimean Tatar riders ride in behind the revolt. While the king's armies buckle, two men want the same woman: the upright knight Skrzetuski (Michał Żebrowski) and the savage Cossack ataman Bohun (Aleksandr Domogarov), both undone by the beautiful Helena.
Hoffman filmed Sienkiewicz's trilogy out of sequence, and this chapter capped it off as the costliest Polish production of its era, stacked with cavalry charges and battle panoramas that stretch on for minutes. At roughly 204 minutes, it swallows a whole evening. It rewards anyone who likes costume drama where vast history and doomed romance gallop side by side. Stream With Fire and Sword (1999) online on iFILM.
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