The most expensive Spanish film ever made, Alatriste is an adaptation of the "Captain Alatriste" series - and I do mean it's an adaptation of the series, as the film tries to literally cram the first five books into a single movie.
Alatriste chronicles the adventures of Captain Diego Alatriste (Viggo Mortensen), a former Spanish soldier turned impoverished sword-for-hire in Spain throughout the 1620s. When not at war, as the Spanish Empire so very often is, Alatriste is forced by poverty to rent out his blade for a few marviedos per job. It's this secondary line of work that gets him mixed up in major scandals and dangerous games of intrigue, from attempted assassinations of visiting nobles to the theft of a gold shipment. He also makes a lot of dangerous enemies as a result, including rival mercenary Gualterio Malatesta (Enrico lo Verso), the power-hungry royal secretary Luis de Alquézar (Jesús Castejón), and the dreaded Fray Emilio Bocanegra (Blanca Portillo), high in the ranks of the Spanish Inquisition. Alatriste's ward, Inigo Balboa (Unax Ugalde), the son of a fellow soldier killed in Flanders, even earns a nemesis of his own - the beautiful, manipulative, all-out evil Angelica de Alquezar (Elena Anaya). Even Alatriste's friends become enemies when he contends with King Philip IV (Simon Cohen) for the affections of a beautiful actress (Ariadna Gil), and his relationship with Inigo grows more contentious as they get older and Inigo sees how ugly Alatriste's world can be sometimes.