STARRING: Antonio Banderas, Diane Venora, Omar Sharif, Vladimir Kulich DIRECTOR: John McTiernan, Michael Crichton WRITTEN BY: William Wisher, Michael Crichton (based on Crichton's "Eaters of the Dead")
At last, the long wait to bring this adaptation of Crichton's 1976 novel (an interesting blend of an actual manuscript and the epic poem "Beowulf") is over, giving audiences nationwide a chance to see... a moderately entertaining, fairly by-the-numbers Hollywood action film that lacks the scope and significance to make it really click.
Banderas plays Ahmad Ibn-Fahdlan, a 10th-century Arab emissary who fools around with the wrong woman and ends up essentially banished to the North, where he meets a rowdy group of Vikings. After word is received that a village in the Vikings' homeland is being threatened, he is chosen in typical Hollywood-cliché fashion to accompany twelve Norsemen who will investigate the situation. During the journey, Ibn (as he is dubbed by the Vikings) quickly learns their language in typical Hollywood-cliché fashion. When they arrive, they find partially eaten bodies (which Banderas helpfully informs us have been "gnawed upon") and a distinct lack of men. That evening, they are attacked by a group of Wendels (rhymes with Grendel, get it?), mysterious creatures who just as quickly vanish, carting away their own dead (along with the heads of a couple of Vikings for good measure). Soon enough, they are beset by a horde of Wendels, which appear to be a hybrid of human and bear. Barely holding out after the second night, they consult a local oracle (an old, gap-toothed, Hollywood-cliché hag that talks like a Scandinavian Yoda) to determine a way to counterattack the Wendels. The rest of the film deals with their covert raid on the Wendels' lair, and the resulting final battle for the village before reaching its resolution just shy of the two-hour mark.
Watching this film, one gets the feeling that McTiernan was too busy this summer with his remake of "The Thomas Crown Affair" and the upcoming "Airframe" (also with Crichton) to give "The 13th Warrior" his full attention. Instead, he seems content to cobble together a few hoary-but-useful Hollywood clichés, throw in some recycled scenes from his own "Predator", and let Crichton's and Banderas' reputations do the rest. Banderas, in fact, is his usual charismatic self, but he's at his most appealing when acting with women, and this film gives him very little opportunity (not that this is a bad thing; McTiernan and Crichton are to be credited with paying only lip service to the love-interest aspect of the plot, which didn't need to be any larger). The film's major flaw is a glaring lack of characterization of the Vikings, who have to be summarized with little descriptions like "The Superstitious" during the end credits just so the audience will remember who they were! The actors are all suitably craggy and bearded, but that's not enough. The exception to this rule is the extremely well-cast Kulich ("Firestorm") as Buliwyf, the group's newly crowned King. With his size and Nordic features (especially a mane of blond hair that makes him look like the Marvel Comics version of Thor), he is completely believable as the strongest and most capable warrior of the bunch. Still, more time could have been spent developing these characters, even at the expense of some of the battle sequences. Speaking of which, they are some of the film's better moments, despite their obvious debt to "Braveheart"'s skirmishes (which already seem in danger of becoming a Hollywood cliché). The two films also share some great cinematography; British Columbia fills in for the fjords, and provides some striking coastal vistas and misty forest settings. Unfortunately, "The 13th Warrior" lacks the epic scale and sense of historical importance that distinguished Mel Gibson's masterpiece. Combined with the lack of character development and the weight of all those Hollywood clichés, it ends up feeling like a Reader's Digest condensation of the book.
Nonetheless, it is well paced, the costume design is noteworthy, and the "Beowulf" references sprinkled here and there (like Buliwyf's line about luck resulting from courage) are a nice touch. Action fans likely won't be disappointed.
GRADE: B-
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews