A relatively entertaining film that had slightly repetetive themes, but managed to pull off the “epic” feel fairly well. Acting was nicely done, but the monotony of a streamlined plot kept it from being better. If you’ve seen one “fearless leader who outsmarts the enemy and wins” movie, you’ve seen this. Its simplicity negated its value as a historically-based film. Usually, screenplays from novels are either extremely good, or relatively poor. This one falls in the middle; in other words, sometimes a writer can make reading about boring things better than a director makes watching them. The gnarly scene where the kid gets his arm sawed off was sweet so I gave it an extra half a point, to bring the grand total to 3.5 on the scale.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 16th, 2004 at 1:47 pm and is filed under M.