After being invaded by the Romans in 70 C.E, the Jews has no choice but get out of their home town to move to the fortress at Masada, a mountain in the Jedean desert, where they can fight against the Roman armies. A group of woman with extraordinary talent gradually take the power and help the Jew in the resistance.
But beyond the expected cheese factor, The Dovekeepers is a missed opportunity to deliver a compelling modern interpretation of the famous mass suicide.
In all, the actors deliver even when the dialogue feels a bit starched and the story seems to hew a bit too faithfully to Josephus' real documentation of the Masada siege's survivor tales.
Here's to the return of the classic network-TV miniseries, colorfully if rather breathlessly embodied by CBS's two-part The Dovekeepers, a tragic historical romance played out against the fabled siege of Masada in the year 70 CE.
The Dovekeepers takes an epic true story of courage and resistance - the battle of Jewish settlers against Roman soldiers in Masada about A.D. 73 - and boils it down to a Harlequin romance.
It's not the stance of The Dovekeepers that is inherently problematic (if only because the audience is likely to agree with it), but how the story is told.
