With the most growling and grunting of any movie this summer — and that includes those apes perched atop the box office — "Conan the Barbarian" seems at times to have actually been made by barbarians.
They even threw in characters with strange-looking foreheads, even stranger-looking beards and one noseless guy.
But then Morgan Freeman narrates about "a mask made from the bones of kings" and a villain bellows "Behold!" before a dull fight on a bridge, and you realize this isn't classic barbarian. It's just another ham-handed adventure flick in eye-deadening, wallet-draining 3-D.
One problem is that Conan himself — embodied by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1980s, via Robert E. Howard's pulp 1930s stories and a lesser-known '70s Marvel comic — isn't that interesting.They even threw in characters with strange-looking foreheads, even stranger-looking beards and one noseless guy.
But then Morgan Freeman narrates about "a mask made from the bones of kings" and a villain bellows "Behold!" before a dull fight on a bridge, and you realize this isn't classic barbarian. It's just another ham-handed adventure flick in eye-deadening, wallet-draining 3-D.
So the filmmakers provide us with his birth on a battlefield (once more unto the breech?) and sullen prepubescence. It turns out young Conan had father issues, and since his dad is played by professional early hominid Ron Perlman, can you blame him?
As an adult barbarian fated to bring together "the nations of Hyboria," Conan (Jason Momoa) declares that he lives, he loves and he slays, doing two of those in a soft-core-porny way. The slaying is due to his hunt for Khalar Zym ("Avatar's" Stephen Lang), the warlord who killed Conan's dad and seeks that mask Morgan Freeman was talking about.
With the mask and the ritual sacrifice of a "pureblood" (played by purely bad Rachel Nichols), Zym's mystic daughter (trash-film addict Rose McGowan) can help dad rule the pre-historic/post-Atlantis world. That is, unless Conan has any growl in the matter.
Director Marcus Nispel is responsible for rejuvenating the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Friday the 13th" titles, but here he should have had his army of screenwriters come up with better monsters.
Squid tentacles emerge from a drain, but those, well, suck. And sand warriors are never a good idea because, sure enough, they crumble when you hit them.
What this movie needed was a dash of "Jason and the Argonauts."
Instead it's the hirsute big brother to "Prince of Persia."
The Schwarzenegger movies from 30 years ago looked like someone put a Stretch Armstrong doll inside a lava lamp, so here, Nispel tries for a grittier style. But that, plus Momoa's stony expressions and a moronic script, only helps slay the fun from this overlong fantasy.
As a barbarian might say, "Grrr!
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar