2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Pathloser, September 3, 2011
A brief history lesson -- the Vikings were the first Europeans to land in the Americas, almost five hundred years before Columbus. They even settled down to live there for awhile, though it didn't last.
There's a brilliant movie somewhere in that story -- an epic of exploration, discovery and struggle between two very different peoples. Too bad "Pathfinder" isn't that movie, with its mindless action, ridiculous characters, and a pompous stream of wretched dialogue and silly direction. It's a disaster, pure and simple.
An American Indian woman found a little boy abandoned in the ruin of a Viking ship, and brought him bck to her people, where he was renamed Ghost and brought up as one of them. But though Ghost (Karl Urban) becomes strong and well-liked, he's still haunted by his Viking past -- until the day he sees dragon boats coming to shore, and his village is brutally slaughtered.
Wounded and left for dead, Ghost is found by a hunting party that includes Starfire (Moon Bloodgood), the token love interest. When the Vikings find him again, he must outwit the small army of Vikings, protect his remaining people from them -- and finally settle his divided feelings about his own identity.
Yeah, it's all a cliche -- outcast hero raised among peaceful people, finds inner peace by kicking savage butts of his birth race. Even in the hands of a good director this would be staggeringly unexiting -- and it isn't in the hands of a good director. It's in Marcus "Texas Chainsaw Massacre Remake" Nispel's hands.
And Nispel has clearly decided that this is his magnum opus: creepy lighting, slow-motion, and pompous dramatic shots like swords being lifted from the snow (signaling that this is a Very Significant Moment). But there's nothing that even a good action movie should have -- there is no logic, cohesion, plot or good dialogue ("The prophecy... is coming to fulfilment!").
Instead, Nispel packs it with gore, swords and torture, to demonstrate that all the Vikings are PURE EVIL, lest you waste any sympathy on them. But his action scenes are more likely to inspire laughter than horror or cheap thrills, especially when Ghost starts fighting the Vikings... in a SLED CHASE. Really. It only gets campier and sillier as time goes on, until Ghost defeats the bad guys by triggering an avalanche... by yelling.
Karl Urban is a deeply talented actor with immense presence... and an unfortunate tendency to pick some really awful action movies. He does the best that anyone could do with such a flimsy character (come on, who really thinks Ghost would join the Vikings?), which isn't that much. Bloodgood is basically a token love interest, and not a very realistic one either.
As for the supporting characters, they might as well be played by paper dolls. The Indians are stereotypically peaceful, spiritual and very boring, with names like Starfire and Wind in Tree. And the Vikings are grunting, thick-skulled behemoths in bloodstained horned skull helmets, with no sign of higher brain function. These aren't Vikings, these are orcs.
A promising idea gets buried under a steaming, putrescent heap of mindless action, logic-free scripting, and characters so thin you could wrap Christmas presents in them. Stunningly wretched.
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Can't believe I paid money for this, January 4, 2012
I never go by someone else's review when I want to see a movie; I choose by story-line. This sounded like a good story. This movie was a middle-school production (financed by HSBC: imagine that), and I spent the entire time saying "really? SERIOUSLY?!". From the old-type black and white movies with the stereotyped Native American monosyllabic speech, to the female Indian who uses contractions and says "yer" a lot, to the over-pressurized blood spewing, I did chuckle a bit. There was quite a bit of Rambo scenes, as a matter of fact, almost EXACT Rambo scenes, except in ancient costume. I spent most of the movie laughing and talking to the TV. Wait, was this SUPPOSED to be a comedy? Oopsie...
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