Movie Review #42 - The 13th Warrior
Jul. 14th, 2007 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catalyst2Oh crap, another Viking movie. Oh, double crap - with Antonio Banderas in it! And yet, as a I watched it, I really enjoyed it - apart from AB, who I think is not very talented at all. However, so much of this movie was good that, as an overall package, this worked.
First check of the watch - every time Omar Sharif spoke but, when he finally disappeared, I never looked at my watch again.
Once I got past the silly premise of "Arab transposed to Dark Ages Scandinavia" and the movie stopped translating about 4 languages simultaneously via subtitles, this took off. Gorgeous scenery which at least looked like my stereotype of Scandinavia (but was in fact BC, Canada) added a lot to the atmosphere. Also adding to the atmosphere was the depiction of the squalor in which most people lived. The scene where two guys use the same bowl of water to rinse their mouths out (and spit it back into the bowl), the the third blows his nose into it and the fourth washes his face captured this wonderfully.
The combat scenes were excellent - Vladimir Kulich (The Beast, AtS S4) was a commanding presence but a number of actors gave similarly robust physical performances. The plot was reasonable and had enough twists and turn to keep me interested.
The more I watched it, the more I wondered what the hell we ever needed AB for - he added nothing to the plot (other than the device of using him to "record" the events) and his presence was so weak as to be almost non-existent. We could have called the "The 12 Warriors" and lost nothing.
A surprisingly good thud and blunder movie.
First check of the watch - every time Omar Sharif spoke but, when he finally disappeared, I never looked at my watch again.
Once I got past the silly premise of "Arab transposed to Dark Ages Scandinavia" and the movie stopped translating about 4 languages simultaneously via subtitles, this took off. Gorgeous scenery which at least looked like my stereotype of Scandinavia (but was in fact BC, Canada) added a lot to the atmosphere. Also adding to the atmosphere was the depiction of the squalor in which most people lived. The scene where two guys use the same bowl of water to rinse their mouths out (and spit it back into the bowl), the the third blows his nose into it and the fourth washes his face captured this wonderfully.
The combat scenes were excellent - Vladimir Kulich (The Beast, AtS S4) was a commanding presence but a number of actors gave similarly robust physical performances. The plot was reasonable and had enough twists and turn to keep me interested.
The more I watched it, the more I wondered what the hell we ever needed AB for - he added nothing to the plot (other than the device of using him to "record" the events) and his presence was so weak as to be almost non-existent. We could have called the "The 12 Warriors" and lost nothing.
A surprisingly good thud and blunder movie.
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Date: 2007-07-15 02:44 am (UTC)When I saw the washing bowl scene, it was almost word for word from Ibn's description! Gave me quite a start:-)
I guess there's a lot of Beowulf and Grendel in it too.
It's also based on a Crichtom novel I haven't read.
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