Probably one of the greatest blessings of indie filmmaking is that it gives one complete creative control. This generally seems to be the reason why so many viewers take an interest in this more modest form of cinematic expression: they’re willing to exchange perfect special effects and big name actors for a more personal and unique touch. With Sword of Hearts, however, this tradeoff doesn’t quite transpire: what we’ve got here is a fairly traditional adventure story that, while put together with a fair deal of technical finesse, still doesn’t offer anything quite unique enough to make it truly stand out.

Sword’s story begins with a thieving wench by the name of Nola (Kathrynne Ann Rosen) being expelled from an estate by its owner, Tristan (Zach Thomas), as she is suspected of having stolen a valuable old scroll. While being led through the woods, the girl manages to escape the guards escorting her and meets the handsome young Geoffrey Pierce (Travis Estes), who helps to free her from the shackles she’s been enchained in.

After Nola is freed, she and her companion are soon assaulted by more of Tristan’s guards, and Geoffrey soon discovers that there is a lot more to Nola than he might have first suspected. Turns out, she was asked by the young Lady Grace to steal the scroll, which contains a map to a magic relic Tristan needs to overthrow the crown and become king of England. (“The Sword of Hearts?” you ask. No. It’s actually something called a Eurydice Hook. A Sword of Hearts is never mentioned. C’est la vie...)

As if all this weren’t enough, there’s more to Geoffrey than he lets on, too: apparently, he and Lady Grace have a bit of history together, and he just happens to be returning to town now on some business with her. Still, sedition is more important, and so Geoffrey, Grace and Nola must band together in order to keep the scroll out of Tristan’s grubby little paws and save the queen of England.

Sounds kinda like the frenetic plots of those “Young Adult Reader” novels? You betcha. I must admit, Sword of Hearts does have a rather refreshing innocence about it. How strange it seems to be watching something with nary a curse word, boob, or splotch of blood as an assignment from a website that just days ago published a review of a movie called Porno Holocaust. Please don’t misconstrue me, I do mean it seriously when I say this approach is refreshing; considering my viewing diet, seeing something completely devoid of sensationalism definitely comes as a shock. Nevertheless, while it’s fairly well-made and its heart is clearly in the right place, Sword of Hearts just isn’t my type of movie. For what it is, though, it’s fairly accomplished.

To start off, the acting is surprisingly decent for such an independent feature, as are the production values, Sword is surprisingly convincing as a period piece, and I consider this quite an accomplishment. Making a movie set in the Elizabethan period with scenes in villages and castles is clearly no small undertaking, and it’s rather extraordinary what has been achieved here with such limited means.

Similarly, the story, while nothing breathtakingly original, is at least delivered as though it were. Clearly, the cast and crew have a great deal of enthusiasm for this type of yarn (even though I don’t), and their love clearly shows. Sure, the film is basically just going through the motions of its genre, but, refreshingly, at least it doesn’t seem to know that.

Finally, it’s worthy to note that the abundant fight choreography, while not exactly professional, is, again, very well executed considering the obviously limited means of the production. All in all, Sword is a good SOV tribute to Elizabethan adventures of the past that, while not massively engaging, still deserves recognition as quite an accomplishment. If this is your type of story, you might consider picking it up; if not, you probably needn’t—that’s what it boils down to.

Definitely helping make the package more worthwhile are some surprisingly interesting extras that directly follow the feature (there’s only one track on the disk). Things start off with fight rehearsal footage that isn’t all that interesting, but which has a commentary track playing over it in which a couple actors go over everything from the finer points of fight choreography to some background on the film all in the space of a few minutes. Next up are some outtakes that are more fun than they have any right to be (I usually despise outtakes). Finally (and unfortunately), the disk kind of hits a snag on its last feature, which consists of cut scenes which were taken out with good reason (the film’s still a little too long even with them gone).

All in all, Sword of Hearts is an amiable if not particularly original entry into the Elizabethan swordplay genre (is that a genre?) which will probably please those who like this sort of thing and mildly amuse those who don’t. Still, at least technically, it’s quite an accomplishment, and so I’d encourage director David Schmidt to keep working. He clearly has talent, and maybe next time he’ll make something that’s more “up my alley.” If so, I’d love to see it.

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