The Reckoning (2003)

Based on Barry Unsworth’s celebrated novel Morality Play, the suspenseful Scottish drama The Reckoning (2004) chronicles the efforts of a band of wandering thespians to solve a crime through a stage play. Paul Bettany stars as a fourteenth-century British priest who’s excommunicated from the Church for committing adultery with the beautiful Marián Aguilera. He winds up falling in with a charismatic band of actors (Willem Dafoe, Gina McKee, and others) who decide to come to the aid of a mute woman accused of a crime. By reenacting the events leading to her arrest, the performers think they can shine a light on the true perpetrator. It’s an entertaining conceit, but director Paul McGuigan might just as easily have spent time illuminating the circumstances surrounding Bettany’s ousting. It doesn’t get much better, after all, than watching Aguilera cavort around in her fourteenth-century duds.