Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
67 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Under appreciated, misunderstood film, July 10, 2007
The movie going audience these days is not only sometimes fickle, but it is also spoiled. My wife and I saw pathfinder, and after some of the terrible criticizing reviews I heard I was bracing for a possibly terrible film. How surprised I was! Pathfinder was a fine film. If you grew up in the 1970's and 80's and like gritty films with hard action, and minimalist approaches, this pure and simple story of survival will probably be a breath of fresh air for you (it was for me) and a chance to take a break away from many of today's bloated, special effects laden blockbusters that are fine for what they are but really don't deliver much in the way of gritty harsh action. Is it perfect? No. But it's a grim story that is meaningful, entertaining, and worth seeing.
The story is not clichéd and predictable in any more of a way than anything else is these days. It's simple, decent, and gets the job done of being entertaining. Sometimes I was surprised, sometimes not, but always entertained. My stomach just turns at the people who hate this film but go on to defend these bloated Hollywood CGI spectacles. The acting is fine, even superb in some places (Carl Urban did a fine job with what he had to work with and shows he is very capable). Visuals are great and sometimes breathtaking, filming style and editing is fine (minimalist, nothing too fancy, does not have a zoom or tilt addicted camera operator and does not look like an MTV video), dialog could have used some work perhaps, but dialog isn't the focus of this SURVIVAL film and it works well enough. The Vikings lines are subtitled, and the Native Americans just speak a simple English. Was this the best choice? Probably, though it may not be satisfying for some. Otherwise the whole film would have been subtitled and I think the director was smart enough to realize that this film was not offering that level of entertainment. This is not trying to be Apocalypto. The main couple has a decent enough chemistry more suited to the times portrayed and the violence they are in the middle of suffering then some of today's recent bloated blockbusters.
My one complain is that there is certainly a level of historical inaccuracy going on here, and the Vikings take the brunt of it. But the film is not supposed to be a work of fact and somebody has to be the villains. As far as villains go however, they certainly are some mean dudes in this film! All in all, everything that happened, the acting, the editing, the pacing, everything was understandable and done well and made this into an exciting film of a story of pure survival with some extra elements thrown in for good measure. If you're a nit picker, stay away from this film. If not, and the subject matter appeals to you, give it a try. I'm glad I did, and I'm looking forward to buying this on DVD.
|
|
|
29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You are the last of your kind in this cursed land, February 16, 2008
The Pathfinder DVD
The Pathfinder is about a Norse/Viking boy around twelve years old who was abandoned or shipped wrecked on the coast of (I'm guessing Canada) where an young Indian woman finds him and adopts him into the tribe. He, of course, is not accepted by the tribe and has to fight to obtain recognition.
Without giving too much, away this move is full of action. Combining elements of Conan the Barbarian - Collector's Edition,Beowulf (Unrated Director's Cut), [[ASIN:B0004Z33EQ ]]Rambo First Blood Part II, 300 (Two-Disc Special Edition), and Jeremiah Johnson. Whew, a good movie for action movie fans.
Highly recommended for fans of for action movies, Conan the Barbarian, Beowulf, Rambo First Blood Part II, the 300, and Jeremiah Johnson.
Gunner February, 2008
|
|
|
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting premise but what they end up doing with it is rather disappointing, August 16, 2007
The historical question is not whether the Vikings came to North America but rather how far South they came once they made it to Vinland (a Norse settlement has been found on the island of Newfoundland). There must have been interactions between the Norsemen and the "skrælingar" (Native Americans), and while there is no evidence that the two races engaged in a violent confrontation it does make a neat idea for a movie, which is why we have the film "Pathfinder: The Legend of the Ghost Warrior." Ghost is a young boy who is left behind after a previous Vikings raid and who grows up eighteen years later to be played by Karl Urban (Eomer in The Lord of the Rings" but also Julius Caesar on "Xena Warrior Princess"). When another Viking raiding party led by Gunnar (Clancy Brown) attacks his village, Ghost leads the fight against the invaders, hoping not only to save his adopted people but also win the heart of Starfire (Moon Bloodgood).
Basically what he have here is "Vikings and Indians" instead of "Cowboys and Indians." Couching the film in such terms, of course, is easily understood but not politically correct. But if you think about the latter in contemporary sports terms, the idea of the Minnesota Vikings taking on the Cleveland Indians is certainly in the ballpark for a key dynamic of this film, which features armored warriors against people armed with essentially sticks and stones. The idea of a war being waged in the New World a thousand years ago is pretty compelling: the concept trailer they shot to get the film produced makes that case quite nicely up to the point when the native warrior attacks the hulking Norseman and you see it is the Viking who has the ax and the lad in the buckskin is fighting with a sword.
The genesis for this 2007 film is the 1987 Norwegian film "Veiviseren" ("Pathfinder"), which is based on a Sami legend. The first full-length film in Sami, that movie was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. This version, written by Laeta Kalogridis and directed by Marcus Nispel, takes the basic story idea of a warrior leading the Sami to victory against a horde of invading Chudes and transplants it from Finnmark to the New World. The Sami become the nameless Native American people rather than the Beothuk people of Newfoundland and the Chudes are transformed into Vikings.
My major problem with this film, quite frankly, is that the hero of this movie is white and the subtext is that if it were not for the kindhearted son of a Viking who was raised by Native Americans the Vikings who come back in Act II of this film would have killed ever native inhabitant of the continent. Well, okay, that would not have happened unless the Vikings infected the local population with a disease that their immune systems could not handle, but you get the idea. At least this movie allows the title character, played by Russell Means, to come up with the obvious strategy that a people armed with Stone Age weapons fighting on their own turf would use against three dragonships worth of Viking warriors, because that is what I really wanted this film to be about.
"Pathfinder" never tries to pass itself off as history, which is a legitimate approach, but a bit more realism would not have hurt. The film was shot in British Columbia, which explains how they get from the ocean shore to snow capped mountains in a relatively short period of time, a direction dictated not by geography but because that is what happened in "Veiviseren." What they should have done was take the premise of a people fighting back against armored invaders in general without being tied to the specifics of the earlier film. Setting up the Vikings to be defeated on terrain and in weather more akin to the land from which they came ends up backfiring.
Whenever possible the film relies on images more than dialogue, although they do not end up going the "Quest for Fire" route. The color palette in the film favors the Vikings for most of the film, tending towards blue, black, white, and silver stressing night, cold, and metal. Eventually these colors overwhelm the film and works against the basic contrast of the Vikings warriors in the lush green forests that I found compelling. The Norsemen speak Icelandic, which is apparently close to the language of the Vikings, leaving English to be the language of Ghost and his tribe.
I ended up rounding down on this film because in the final act of the film the Vikings enter the realm of being too stupid to live. There is a scene that involves going around a frozen lake. Gunnar sees this approach as being an attack on the courage of him and his men, insisting on walking across the ice. At this point I turned to my daughter and said, "Gee, if only they came from a land of ice and snow, and knew something about when not to cross a frozen lake." Besides, I like it when the good guys win a lot more than when the bad guys lose.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
Video On Demand ~ Steven Strait
Video On Demand ~ Dougray Scott
Video On Demand ~ Dwayne Johnson
Video On Demand ~ Jason Statham
Video On Demand ~ Wes Bentley
Video On Demand ~ Karl Urban
Video On Demand ~ Yun-Fat Chow
Video On Demand ~ Elias Koteas
Video On Demand ~ Timothy Olyphant
