Warrior of the North The new adaptation of Conan’s adventures, told in a mixture of style paintings by Milius and Flashire, presents brutal male action and a bright shower of adventure on big screens without censorship and glamorous gloss. Everything, as it should be, fantasy creatures, black magic, severed heads, hands and other parts of the body, naked girls and whipping rivers of blood in endless duels. Nispel made no compromises to expand the audience and rightly did, tightly knit entertaining fantasy really succeeded.
Although the tape does not pretend to be compared with the first “Conan the barbarian”, where the main role was played by Arnold Schwarzeneger, the film goes through a series of successful homages, placing a minimum emphasis on this, but still not shy of borrowings, analogues and quotes. Jason Momoa, of course, in any comparison with the insistent Conan-Arnold does not go, and a pale tenuous shadow looks even against the background of Ralph Moeller, but has his own charisma and bright appearance, thanks to which Conan turned out quite spectacular and memorable, as well as the film itself.
Like the original picture, most of the film, the word “fantasy” does not come to mind, everyone around only talks about magical powers and properties, but legends are made up, the ancient environment is not filled with a host of monsters, and the battle scenes hardly go beyond realism. But in the end, the mystical part rushes out to the delight of the audience, and the two most memorable scenes are, perhaps, just those episodes with sand demons and giant tentacles. The theme of magic is not revealed more than completely. The vaunted powerful mask is not able to demonstrate anything special, the inexpressive and boring villain pales even against the background of his best warrior, and the equally undescript villain with appearance from the picture “Battlefield: Earth” manages only to ridiculously parody Freddy Krueger with his clawed legs, and completely show the Electra complex in relation to his father.
Incest, however, the viewer will not be pleased, but erotic content will be presented in full, both for boys and girls. However, it is unlikely that “Conan the Barbarian” is the film, which should reduce your soul mate in the hope of a romantic night in the future. And the manner of treatment of the main character with women is quite capable of embarrassing, if not infuriating, many representatives of the fair sex. Male cinema is so male, and this is clearly only a plus for him. A bold, bright, heroic spectacle that will look great many times, and after all, “Conan” really wants to review, despite all the flaws.
And the flaws, in addition to representatives of a couple of the worst villains in cinema, and really enough. Start with the fact that the master of horrors Marcus Nispel did not learn to shoot action scenes, lames everything, from the staging of battles to the movement of the camera, but it is hardly worth criticizing in this case the camera work, after a bunch of delightful landscapes and amazing spectacular finds in the spirit of the flight of one warrior from a catapult with almost first-person shooting. No, Nispel, who filmed the best honor of the Texas Massacre and the best part of Friday the 13th, once stepped aside from the horror, filming the disgusting Pathfinder, where even the story of revenge for his tribe is incredibly similar to the concept of the new Conan, now, given all the shortcomings and shortcomings of the above-mentioned confrontation of the Vikings with the Indians, only the confusion of battle actions, nevertheless capable of pleasing the bloodthirsty viewer with an abundance of murders, remained unworked.
There is a lot of blood, little sense, but again it is hardly a movie in which you should carefully look for the presence of meaning and some moral message to the viewer. In the end, it can be suddenly discovered, and then still be puzzled, what was the film about. Brutal adventures look no more or less than they should. A completely different story than it was in the series and two classic films, but this is no less interesting, cool and pleasant to watch. Organic casting copes with a satisfactory assessment with its characters, giving out bright and template types on the screen, a harsh warrior of the North, his combat girlfriend, villains with the idea of domination of the world and everything in the spirit. And most importantly, I want to continue!
7 IS 10
Original