User reviews

The worst film I can remember seeing. Memorable only for the screenwriter, actors, sound recording, cinematographer, editor and director duelling it out for who could deliver the worst performance.

That said I would recommend it if only for comedy value. Films as terribly made as this don't come along often. Enjoy.

Having watched it twice (with growing dismay) I have to say this film will probably be used by film schools to demonstrate how NOT to make a movie. The acting is, with few exceptions, terrible. Barber-Duffy as Lawrence puts in a wooden and unconvincing performance which is amply demonstrated by his first scene.

May of the scenes are framed so badly they highlight both the inadequacy of both sets and direction. (See for example the scenes where the Head of Intelligence briefs his agents, and the hospital scene later in the film).

Access to Clouds Hill was infamously limited: but why does the Director use the exact same bit of film (Lawrence arriving on his Brough to find the cottage door open), multiple times? It's just so obvious.

The blue-screen scenes which are meant to represent Arabia are simply atrocious. It would have been better not to use them at all.

I find it hard to believe the film has gathered so many awards.

On the positive side, (yes there is one) the Dorset countryside is beautiful and does evoke the landscape around Clouds Hill.

I know much of this story from Rodney Legg's 1988 book, so was interested to see it turned into a narrative. And I knew it would be low budget - but low budgets can often be a spur to imaginative and exciting solutions. Not in this case, sadly. Almost every department of moviemaking was shoddy. Direction was leaden. Editing was stodgy. Sound recording was mushy, and sound mixing woeful. Grading? Forget it. Continuity. Ditto. And, as for the acting... From the opening sequence, with a child actor who would have made a primary school nativity audience wince, to our hero, who was presumably trying to convey a tortured soul but only succeeded in looking mildly dyspeptic, even while squeezing out a tear. To be honest, I didn't get far enough into the movie to reach the actors we've heard of. After the second sequence of 'Arabs' running single file right to left I decided to either stay and laugh or go and do something more life-enhancing. I went. If you're interested in the story, track down the book. If you want to see a good movie, go elsewhere.

I think my heading sums it up best...

When they started with the opening scene I though it had to be part of the local adverts..... right?

Wrong.... Yes i went in knowing it was low budget & shot locally but even so I expected much better than this.

Everything about it was poor, opening music sounded like it was done on one of those toy xylophone's, sound quality abysmal, acting that would have seen those in a local production having non-speaking parts the following year, the direction... where to start.... I think you get the picture...

It really is one to avoid, i walked out after 30 minutes otherwise I would have been rolling in the aisles & watching it locally I suspect there were a few in the audience who were "extras" so I saved myself the shaming....

Looking through the reviews I suspect those giving high marks actually appeared in the film as I really didnt see anything worthy of more than a one.

It really was horrible & moreso as I admire & am fascinated by the TE Lawrence story.

Sadly, a wasted evening. The wooden acting was matched by the poor photography, editing, sound and continuity. We were treated to an overlong funeral procession, on repeat. Even the beautiful Dorset locations were wasted by the lack of focus and lighting. The bloated script was an overlong conspiracy theory taking us up to the present day. Lawrence was a brave - even heroic - man, if confused about his identity. A shame this film couldn't do him justice.

A reasonable story. But an extremely amateur production. Poor lighting and sound. Bad continuity. Awful shot composure.

Synthesiser created music to a period drama ????

I've seen better acting in amateur dramatics. And far better production by college students.

Dire amateur dramatics with no respect for its subject matter. Dwells on misinformed conspiracy theories best consigned to the trash. The genuine Lawrence story is far more interesting than this self-delusional dog's dinner. Avoid at all costs!

This film is - in my view - essentially nothing but a 'home movie'. Utterly amateur in all respects. The director has a massive ego - and a dearth of creative talent. Nor does he possess the requisite technical skills to make a film on this scale.

There are numerous ghastly editing/continuity mistakes, and it was very apparent that the low budget did not extend to splashing out on any lighting!!! The inside scenes were all so dark that it was impossible to see what was going on.

A large number of the cast members were barely even 'talented' amateurs. Many of the performances are embarrassingly poor, matching the quality of the stilted screenplay.

Aside from the technical shortcomings, the director's story-telling technique is quite hopeless, leaving the audience guessing and struggling to follow the thread.

To add insult to injury, the title of the film is not even original - it has been stolen from a TV movie. I guess this might well provide grounds for a lawsuit for breach of copyright when and if this becomes 'public knowledge'.

I have an interest in T E Lawrence and know and understand the subject. I find it hard to believe that a conversation in Wareham Church (with the Director presumably) has led to what appears to be a lifelong obsession and conspiracy theory that the accident was not an accident but in effect an assassination.

Conversations, scenarios, meetings and assumptions made in the film are fictional and are there to enforce the Directors view that this was an assassination and is therefor completely one sided and biased. Many of the facts associated with the accident are not even mentioned or referenced.

The film is low budget that I understand but it could have been a lot better than this surely. The sound quality is poor and the dialogue does not synchronise with the lip movements like in an old spaghetti western. The green screen techniques are very poor and consequently look very odd in the film.

Acting and the script is very poor indeed and the continuity has to be questioned as do the "flash backs" which will make little or no sense to those that do not understand the subject.

The "pulsing" incidental music I found annoying, as were all the brand new props.

T E Lawrence was 46 years old when he died but the actor who plays him does not look old enough to ride a motorbike and is completely unconvincing.

Significant parts of the film are shot in very low light conditions making these parts of the film difficult to see and the film is also overly long, no doubt due to the subject matter not being compelling to start with i.e. Making something from nothing, or at least trying to.

The film is completely biased and does not represent accurately all the facts of the accident and the content of the film is manufactured to fit the Directors assassination theory.

Had anyone wanted to assassinate T E Lawrence I am sure there were many other opportunities and options other than waiting for him to visit the Post Office, in broad daylight, in front of witnesses and with no guarantee of success i.e. Guaranteeing a desirable outcome.

Now there is even an extended version of an overly long film available!

I really cannot understand why and how this film has so many positive reviews, it is very poor and one to miss. Complete nonsense too.

To suggest that this was the last in a trilogy of films about TE Lawrence and therefore number it with Lawrence of Arabia is so insulting to David Lean that it makes me boil with anger whilst simultaneously keel over with laughter!!! I can't believe it has made it to Amazon Prime! It should have been consigned to a dingy attic along with other amateur home movies.

Absolutely everything about it is so dreadful that I simply had to stop watching it after 30 minutes as I was cringe with embarrassment for all involved. The directing, the sound, the lighting, the acting, the script, the cinematography, the art direction are all excruciatingly awful. I would say the sets as well but, as some of it is actually filmed in Lawrence's home, Clouds Hill, I can't really lump that in with all the other atrocities! But what was his estate or the National Trust thinking associating themselves with such utter piffle?

I am absolutely amazed that some extremely good actors were part of this project! Michael Maloney, Brian Cox and Hugh Fraser are top talent - maybe they are relatives of the director and did it as a favour! I didn't see any of them in the first half hour and almost wondered if they were added to the cast list incorrectly!

Perhaps others who have given this film anything other than a 1 or 2 (being kind) have also actually reviewed a different film by mistake because anyone who loves cinema and has any discernment could not award it anything higher than the very lowest score!

Unfortunately, I bought this on Prime thinking it was the 1992 movie of virtually the same name - they barely changed it, the cads. Within the first 10 minutes I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The actor they got to play Lawrence when he was 45 looked to be in his early to mid-20s, and certainly did not sound like the educated son of a lord, even an illegitimate one, or like a seasoned soldier. The delivery of lines was more like he was gossiping about the village than a desert warrior & officer talking about global security issues. The introspection scenes were self indulgent and just bad. The green screen special effects would have been done better by high school students - you can still see the black cut out lines. It looks like a home project from 20 years ago. If you have any interest in either good entertainment, a well one movie, or any interest in Lawrence, please don't watch this. Just go watch the 1992 A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia, if you can find it. A student should be ashamed of producing this.

The bottom line here is: there can't be another movie, including all those from the 1890s, so poor technically speaking than this one. It must have been made as a seventh grade school project in my neighbor's backyard. Shot in an iPhone 4 without any extra lightning. And with the Apple store salesforce having fun in their first acting experience.

I am never too demanding about special effects or technical standards to enjoy a movie, Screenplay s is #1, 2 and 3 in my priorities. But this time, it's simply impossible paying attention to any plot.

There is a pretty decent TV movie with Ralph Fiennes about Lawrence during the Conference that divided the Arab territory in incomprehensive countries. The "great job" by the British and the French, after WWI, that haunts the region. That movie is a good place to go.

At the time of writing, this film doesn't appear to have any film reviews from external accredited sources, with the exception of 1 which is attached to this page (Common Sense Media) and I can't help but feel that the lack of independent reviews (I'm not talking about user reviews on IMBb like this one) maybe intentional on the filmmakers part, due to self-preservation. Most film releases these days can and do get reviewed by a number of review sites, many of which specialise in low budget indie films. This is just one way how smaller indie films get more exposure.

Reading through the user reviews on here is a real mixed bag. Most of the 10 star ratings seem to be plant reviews because they appear to know the director personally, which is hardly objective. Also some reviews seem to be in retaliation to any negative reviews which gives a whiff of the director or someone involved in the film responding under pseudonyms (may not be the case of course). Some of the negative reviews are quite harsh and some of it is valid but some of it less so and I would say that you need to keep in mind the level of this film. As an audience member, we're here to talk about our experience of the film presented to us, not to belittle those who made it.

One of the arguments that has come up in defence of the film is that it can't be compared to the budgets of Star Wars, Marvel or the Bond films. This is a pointless argument, because I can't imagine anyone is making that comparison. The real comparison is how Lawerence: After Arabia compares to other indie films made on a similar budget or scale; and in an honest, non-biased review, the answer is.... not very well.

Nolan made 'Following' for £6,000, Ben Wheatley made 'Down Terrace' for £25,000. These are just two examples of directorial indie debuts, self-funded by British directors, made outside the system, for a fraction of the budget that Lawrence: After Arabia was made for (£120,000 listed on this page). THIS is the comparison of which this film must be judged. It is entirely possible to make an engaging, well made indie film, especially in this day of age with widespread tech available to filmmakers. It has been proved over and over. What counts is the voice of the filmmaker at the helm.

Lawerence: After Arabia is clearly a passion project for the director. Getting it off the ground and made at all is no small task. Making films is notoriously difficult and especially when you're doing it off your own back. Most people with aspirations of making a feature film will never quite go the distance. So the director and his team deserve to be commended for having the tenacity to get the film made.

However, the results of their pursuit have produced an incredibly uneven film. I went into this knowing it was a low to no budget indie and I certainly didn't go into it expecting to find a companion piece for David Lean's 'Lawrence of Arabia' (which embarrassingly the trivia seems to suggest). There are several devastating flaws which very quickly expose the production for what it is - this being, a painfully slow film, devoid of any real sense of cinematic storytelling. Many of the films worst aesthetic attributes have been mentioned by others: the awful use of green screen, using the same shot over and over, poor lighting, continuity and exposure issues, but the central issue for me is the screenplay.

There is no sense of dramatic structure to the film, it just plods along with the 2nd act offering no real rising stakes or conflict for the central characters personal journey. The dialogue is woefully expositional at every turn. Characters don't talk with their own individual voices, only as a vessel to explain the plot rather than letting the story unfold on-screen. Part of the problem here is that the film is less of a story about Lawrence's later life (after Arabia) and more about making a 2 hour argument for a conspiracy theory. This is not enough for most audiences to invest their time in.

The bad writing is exposed even more by the poor acting. I'm not going to include Brian Cox here, because it's merely a short voiceover. While this is a great bit of fortune for the film, using his name in the way its promotional material has, will anger many viewers who will feel cheated. Tom Barber-Duffy is terribly miscast in this film. He offers no presence or charisma to the role which is absolutely essential when playing Lawrence. Of course, given the scale of this film, it was never going to be a movie star in the role, but I have to believe that there was a more suitable candidate since the whole film is centred around and depends on that performance. When you combine the script with the performance, it's an undercooked mess which fails to engage and as a result the film simply cannot recover. The film is far too long and if you make it to the end, you feel every passing minute. This is greatly exasperated by the constant musical score, which is tonally out of place and a handful of painfully long takes which never cut to any other sort of coverage. The scene of examining the motorbike drags out for more than 4 mins on the same shot. So long that the light levels keep shifting throughout and the characters disappear in and out of shadows.

From a technical point of view, there is some milage in the 'it's so bad it's good' argument that the film appears to be gaining a reputation for. I have to admit, this film was recommended to me for the wrong reasons. The truth is it's just poor filmmaking. I won't single out the particulars as others have covered this ground, but there are definitely decisions which should have been made on whether certain elements remained in the final cut. Whole scenes so riddled with technical mistakes, that it's just so bad it simply should not have been in the film at all. One such example is the bench scene. It's excruciating to watch, and yes, ultimately amusing because it's just so badly pieced together. The background plates, jump cuts and shocking changes in exposure and colour levels from one shot to the next - these errors are not due to a low budget. You have to wonder what is gained from keeping this in. Maybe the director thought it was important for Lawrence and Florence to have that little chat. But the reality is, no one is listening to what they're saying because they are completely taken out of the scene by the technical failings. In this case, is it worth keeping this scene in the final cut? The answer in no, as nothing is gained from it other than to expose the films shortcomings.

There is a level of indulgence at work here. The film is far too long. Does it really need that opening scene with the young boy. I'm assuming this is mean't to represent Mark (the director) as a boy? If so, it's just egotistical and sets the film off on such a flat note. There appears to be 3 different cuts of the film which is frankly absurd. This film would greatly benefit from a lean 80-90 minute cut which removes many of the unnecessary scenes (from a dramatic level) and the many technically riddled scenes which shouldn't be there anyway. Honestly, even a 60 min cut, perhaps as an episode would greatly improve things. Modern audiences are used to seeing content which is at the very minimum well-shot and put together. Obviously you can't please everyone, but in this day of age, people expect a certain level of competency in order for them to suspend belief and engage with a story. Once again, a low budget really is no excuse. Nolan and Wheatley managed more with less.

I'm not going to labour the point, because I don't for a second believe the filmmakers have made these mistakes intentionally and there is a clear leaning curve which will come out of this. I saw in another user review, which was responding to a recent negative review (lets be honest, it's clearly the director or someone from the inner team replying) that they're now making a follow up documentary. I would say that this is perhaps more suitable ground for the subject matter, because this way it means the focus can purely be on the conspiracy angle. This is essentially what Lawrence: After Arabia is about. Not an examination of the man or the later part of his life. In my opinion, the director should move onto some new material in order to grow as a filmmaker and potentially create a more accomplished film.

Ironically the film ends with a Marvel styled post-credit scene, which stretches the conspiracy theory to breaking point and also demonstrates a lack of discipline by the director to know when enough is enough. With that in mind, I'll take my own advice and close this review by simply saying that I hope the writer/director learns from his experience and goes onto make a better film. Time will tell.

This is genuinely one of the worst films ever made. The only redeeming quality is the unintentional comedy it provides. This film and Mark J. T Griffin give Tommy Wiseau and 'The Room' a run for its money for the most laughs in a supposedly serious drama.

Top 3 favourite unintentional comedy moments:

1. Constantly reusing the same shot of the motorbike entering Cloud Hill (could be a fun drinking game) 2. The bench scene. Hilarious editing and green screen so bad it appears the bench is floating up in the clouds with the characters sat on it.

3. All green screen sequences. JPG backgrounds with scaling that makes Lawrence seem as big as King Kong.

I can see that it's a passion project and I can respect the fact it's a dream realised for the director. But it's now out there in the world and people may actually pay for this film, which is essentially bad student film quality. There are so many ludicrous technical mistakes, so many baffling decisions that made it into the final cut. This is where the comedy is found.

The directors ego is outrageous. It's hard to fathom why a film of this level and low quality has 3 different cuts (theatrical, directors cut & extended). Oh and it doesn't stop there, he's selling a book about the making of the film, a novelisation of the film, a published screenplay, even signed film posters and T'shirts!. Absolutely deluded by the self-importance of his creation... Tommy Wiseau anyone?

This is what led me to write this review. If you put a film out there in the world, even a low quality one like this (and then try to sell everything including the kitchen sink) it means peoples opinions are fair game. If someone has a negative opinion it's not valid to say "I'd like to see you try and make a film..." like some of the more sycophantic reviews on this site have stated. You can't have it both ways.

I would recommend this film, but not for any of the reasons the filmmakers intended. It doesn't work in the slightest as an engaging drama, a biography of Lawrence's later life or even a remotely competent piece of filmmaking. However it does work as an unintentional comedy that will surely have you rolling in the aisles. Who knows, if enough people see it maybe it will become a cult film just like 'The Room' ?

Fingers crossed for the release of yet another version of the film... Lawrence: After Arabia (Drinking Game Cut)

T. E. Lawrence was right to distrust the film industry during his lifetime. He is probably still rotating in his grave at Moreton, the poor troubled man really deserved better than Mark Griffin"s treatment of his final demise. And I am not talking about the limited budget of this so called "film", Stephen Soderbergh showed the world that you can actually make a movie with an iPhone camera. You need some talent though, and this is painfully lacking from any aspect of this oeuvre which shamelessly even quotes from David Lean's cinematic masterpiece. It really damn hurts to watch "Lawrence after Arabia" and yes, I do mind that it hurts!