John Johnson Okay, a crap script. Serious problem with that. But some good acting, beautiful sets, nicely shot, good special effects. If you want to see a fantasy movie, and you have seen all the good ones, this is worth a spin. Loads of action. Well choreographed. The trailer movies on the DVD imply you are an idiot man who likes to watch movies for the boobs and violence, which doesn't set the mood, I admit. But there is no exploitation of women in this movie, and some of the women even take up swords. So, okay, this isn't Shakespeare. If fact, prepare thyself for character arcs that are vapid and almost theme-less. It's basically a medieval/supernatural revenge tale. But if you're just looking for a no-brainer fix of non-dragon fantasy and action, especially on a weekend afternoon, you will enjoy this. Jason S. is excellent.

winopaul After seeing Uwe Boll whine about not getting his kickstarter money and what a prick he is, I looked him up and came here. I never heard of him or his movies prior to today. I really wanted to hate this movie. I was going to do a whole "forensic accounting" style review talking about how he vaporized 60 million. Oh how I wanted to hate him. Oh, how I loved the comments. The one about how Scooby Doo should have a cameo, and all the ones complaining about every single thing in the movie. I loved the Japanese guy: "I think {Uwe Boll} should get some education from whatever school he goes too and learns and relearns directing techniques to keep people interested in his movies." Oh god, I laughed until I needed oxygen, all that home-spun Japanese decency. I was ready to pile on, and then, get this, I watched the movie.What I saw was a 120-million dollar movie delivered for 60-million. I was amazed. There were some shadows crossing actor's faces, but the cinematography was so good otherwise, I have to believe this was hip and intentional. How neo-postmodern. Decent score, decent acting, good audio, all around pretty good, plot not so hot.I know this movie was a flop. It barely moved the needle the first week, and fell off a cliff the second week. I know that Uwe must have offended some gamer Asperger sensibility, but I'll be darned if I can figure it out. Perhaps he respected women too much. Was he too socially adept? Viewers sure hate him for something. Yeah, it was goofy in places, but I liked it way better than any of the Lord of Rings movies, none of which I have been able to watch beginning-to-end. I try again every few years, maybe its time.Perhaps it was not goofy enough, I mean, maybe with this genre you do have to go full retard and have walking talking trees and flaming hemorrhoids in the sky, like Lord of the Rings. This movie was pretty mild, some particle effects, I thought rather well done. So maybe you have to have wildly implausible things to get a true following, like Scientology or Mormonism. Gosh knows it works for Lord of the Rings, talk about stupid stuff going on. That movie makes gold plates and personal planets look sane.As you can surmise, I am not too fond of this type of movie, so rather than push it into full retard mode, I would scale it back. You have to realize the demographic is not the 13-to-16 year old Howard Stern demo. Its the 8-to-12 Caucasian boy demo. Its a little tougher.Since mom and dad may well be at the theater, lets just take out Ray Liotta. I liked him, despite it looking like he just had a Botox enema, but all this mystic debbel crap will just get the parents looking at each other and going "huh?" Sad fact is that the antagonist goes from the hyena people at the beginning to Liotta at the end. So half the money shots are with Ray. Too bad, now we're in rewrite.Just as well, since the other problem is that 8-year-old Caucasian kids might idolize their brothers, and they still remember momma's breast feeding, but they really don't want to root for dad. So both Burt Reynolds and Statham are father figures in a movie trying to appeal to a demographic that is starting to resent and hate their fathers.OK, easy fix. The weaselly slightly effeminate son of the king--Lillard-- that is the guy the kids want to identify with, not Burt. So switch those two roles. Now the weaselly kid can be the boy regent hero, and Burt can be the evil vizier, like in Aladdin. Now we are right back to Boogey Nights and Burt is in his element. Leave Burt in it, or replace him with Statham, to get mom and dad into the movie. For Statham's character, same deal, instead of his son getting killed by the hyena people, let Statham get killed and have the son be avenger. Now the 8-year-old boy has a reason to watch, and to watch the endless sequels as well. I surf the web while I played the movie so a lot of it made no sense. It seemed like there were the hyena people so it started out like 7 Samuri/Magnificent 7. Then it went kind of Bronson/Walking Tall, which is just fine. But keep it with the hyena people, not Ray Liotta at the end, its too confusing for me, much less 8-year-olds. I loved the Tarzan Girls that dropped out of the trees. I was struck by how artistic and visual it was, while still being dirt cheap to film. Remember, they are not sex-objects to an 8-year-old, so give them bigger breasts to serve as momma reminders.That Ironboy.... ahhh...jethead---- ahhn no, Hellboy, that Hellboy guy was in the movie and he is always great. Not sure who he was or what he was doing, but keep him in for sure. With Liotta out, that should get the time closer to 90 minutes, that is another key thing to fix this.The mom character was way too old-- this is for 8-year-olds so she should be 25 tops. Wasn't the mom in the Stargate franchise? Gosh I love her from there, but sorry, ya gotta work the demo.So, switch Reynolds and Lillard's roles. Switch Statham and Ford's roles. Write out Liotta. Substitute any teen vampire fluff babe for Claire Forlani. (I now realize she is not the Stargate girl, Claudia Black, sorry ladies.) One kid dies from an arrow, the other kid saves his mom and the kingdom, 85 million domestic gross, but the action figures will haul in 40 million easy. Hellboy can be the kid's new daddy, how cool is that?

kristiscott111 I just lost 2 hours of my life watching this movie that I can never get back. I love medieval time movies. So we watched this one. About 10 minutes into it we were thinking uh oh, this is gonna suck. 30 minutes later we were contemplating fast forwarding through it to see if it ended up getting better. But were afraid we would miss some vital element in the movie and then it would be even worse than if we could just watch it straight through. It even had an all star cast! Actors that do very well & I enjoy watching. The dialog was painful to listen to as the actors did what that could with an awful script. The special effects were, well there really weren't any. Unless you consider the stuff on the original Star Trek special effects. Basically it was Robin Hood Men in Tights meets Lord of the Rings meets Braveheart...then take away money for scenery & costumes & add horrible dialogues and you've got it! This producer guy, Uwe Boll, was crazy enough to make a part 2 & a part 3 of this movie also but the 2nd & 3rd time around he try's to throw in some time travel!

thedelightfulme Browsing my netflix this film caught my eye, I enjoy a good fantasy film and it has some big names like Jason Statham. So I went in to this film hopeful. Right off the bat the music ruins the whole thing. It's desperately trying to create a mood but only ends up being jarring and off putting. The writing is abysmal. Some of the lines are cringe worthy. The costumes are hit and miss - some of the krug are good, but some, are terrible. The camera angles and special effects look rushed in some scenes (not sure what was happening there). I'm not completely sure how they convinced so many actors to star in this, or how they got the money to make it. I don't wish to blame any particular person for it, but someone somewhere had to have known how horribly wrong this was going.Overall, I'd give it a miss. Unless you're playing drinking games. Might be good then.