'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' a Worthy Sequel

The Queen just wants to have fun. Well, she also wants to defend England from Spain and serve her subjects to her utmost. But when Walter Raleigh, swashbuckling hunk, enters her court, he makes her feel more like a natural woman than a mighty head of state.

Heavy lies the head that wears the crown in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," the long-gestating sequel to 1998's "Elizabeth."

Like that first film, "The Golden Age" focuses on the battle between private desire and public duty, the necessary renunciation of a personal life when matters of security and protocol won't permit one. With their mix of cloak-and-dagger intelligence games and royal soapsuds, the "Elizabeth" movies manage to make the 16th century kinda sexy, if a bit bauble-like.

Last time out, Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth I realized she couldn't dally about with Lord Robert of Leicester (Joseph Fiennes) and pay her country the attention it needed. So she becomes the born-again Virgin Queen. Now it's Clive Owen's Sir Walter Raleigh, fresh from his adventures in the New World, who makes her highness weak at the knees. But she holds it together, at least until her favorite lady-in-waiting, Bess (Abbie Cornish), muddies the waters. That's when Elizabeth straps on her armor, mounts her steed and rouses the troops to take on the Spanish Armada. Hell hath no fury like a queen scorned.

The public-private royal tango received a more modern and sophisticated treatment in last year's "The Queen." Helen Mirren's Queen Elizabeth II feels that public mourning for Princess Diana is unseemly; Prime Minister Tony Blair realizes that it's politically expedient for all involved. The film depicts a changing of the guard away from the cloistered royal mystique.

The "Elizabeth" films, on the other hand, are about the creation of that mystique. It's no secret that Blanchett is a master of metamorphosis; here's a woman who can win an Oscar for playing Katherine Hepburn (in "The Aviator"), then turn around and play Bob Dylan (in the upcoming "I'm Not There"). Taken as a whole, her double "Elizabeth" duty reveals an impressive arc, from naive girl to Virgin Queen to seasoned, very human leader. It's this sense of humanity - vulnerability, rage, pride - amid the highest levels of power that makes Blanchett's performance a powerhouse.

Some of that humanity might have been reserved for King Phillip II of Spain (Jordi Molla), whose Catholic fervor comes off as a one-note tune of Snidely Whiplash-like evil. He might have been a bad man, but at least make him a little more interesting for the sake of the drama. And I could have used a little more of Geoffrey Rush's Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen's spy-in-chief who reminds us that political dirty tricks are hardly an American invention.

"The Golden Age" feels like two movies - one a bodice-ripping romance, the other a study in statecraft and power. But these strands, one private, one public, come together in the title character and the balancing act she must master. Director Shekhar Kapur cleverly turns us into voyeurs by having his camera peer around latticework and columns, making everything public to the viewer. In the movies, as in the queen's life, private life is a scarce commodity.

Grade: B-plus

"Elizabeth - the Golden Age" stares Cate Blanchett, Clive Owen, Geoffrey Rush, Abbie Cornish, Jordi Molla and Rhys Ifans. Directed by Shekhar Kapur. PG-13 (violence, sexuality, nudity). In wide release. 106 min.

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