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For some reason, films that begin with the word `thirteen' never seem to be very good. Anybody remember The Thirteenth Floor? Didn't think so. The best of the bunch is probably the cheesy 1960 B-flick 13 Ghosts (filmed in `Illusion-O' by William Castle), where weak-hearted viewers could opt to not see the spooks that appeared on the screen by looking through a special hand-held viewer.
Could film titles containing `thirteen' doom the movie? If they are, in fact, cursed, then somebody at Disney must not know about it. They actually changed the name of this picture to The Thirteenth Warrior. It was originally called Eaters of the Dead, like the Michael Crichton book on which it was based. Maybe somebody wanted to distance it from Fox's spring cannibal flop Ravenous. Warrior has actually been finished for quite some time and, for some reason, dusted off for a late summer release.
Coming off as an attempt to combine Braveheart and Star Wars, Warrior tells the story of an Arab who is forced to join a group of brawny Scandinavians that hit the road to save a village from destruction at the hands of an unspeakable evil. He is far from being a great mercenary and actually just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – a toothless old seer says that the village will be saved by twelve Nordic brutes and one man `who isn't from the North.' Let me also point out that the hag spoke one language, which was translated into another Scandinavian dialect, which was in turn translated into something else, and yet again interpreted into the Arab language spoken by the protagonist. The result seems like an old Swedish film being uncovered and dubbed by Omar Shariff. And when was the last time you shelled out eight bucks to see one of those?
The Arab, played by Antonio Banderas (The Mask of Zorro), sets off with the twelve barbarians the following morning. He can't understand what they're saying, can't lift their giant battle-swords and rides a puny little horse. Sounds like my first day of high school. Although they are a jovial bunch, almost constantly laughing even though they're preparing to throw down with something so bad that its name dare not pass their lips, the men are skeptical of Banderas, and shorten his hell-a-long Arab name to Ibn (or `son of').
During one particularly silly scene, the film shows Ibn slowly learning the Scandinavian dialect by silently listening to his mates talk around the campfire every night. When he finally masters the language, the music swells like Luke had just used The Force for the first time. Ibn also stops at a blacksmith to whittle his heavy sword into a thin scimitar and begins to fit into his new surroundings.
Yeah, the battle scenes are fun, but in an attempt to conceal the evil force the warriors are fighting, they are left murky and jerky. By the way, the invincible forces sort of look like a saber-tooth bear that walks upright and rides horses. Try to keep your eyes from rolling back into your skull when a crazy old village woman tells the warriors that the only way to stop the creatures is to kill their Queen. How original!
Adapted for the screen by William Wisher Jr., who penned Terminator 2: Judgment Day, as well as Crichton's upcoming Airframe, and directed by John McTiernan (The Thomas Crown Affair – which he had time to make after this), Warrior is a mess of a film. It's not the worst film in the world, but if you pro-rate its entertainment value over what it must have cost to make, you've got one heck of a stinker. I wish that there were a special viewer for this `thirteen' film – one that would turn it into something else. (1:54 - R for bloody battles and carnage)
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