| Overall Grade: |
B+ |
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| Story: |
C- |
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| Acting: |
A |
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| Direction: |
B+ |
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| Visuals: |
A- |
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Good for Hollywood, Bad for History
by Puppy (movies profile)
Jul 16, 2008
86
of
103 people found this review helpful
I enjoyed watching the movie but they screw up a lot of the history. Every enemy is a Merkit I think, rather than the many small tribes he actually interacted with during the period of this story. And they use Japanese and Chinese actors for the male leads, decent acting though so its not terrible. The Mongolian actress who plays Chinggis' wife is really pretty.
The movie gives some insight into the personality of Chinggis Khaan (born Temujin) and how he was able to build a strong following. When Jamuga questions one of his followers leaving to follow Chinggis instead, the man answers because he is fair.
They also make it very clear that Chinggis accepts any child born into his family as his own despite any questions of who fathered the child. The reality is only one son was of questionable birth, though the movie implies it was most of his kids. They also point out a major change Chinggis made from the original steppe culture in that he would pursue reclaiming his kidnapped wife from his enemies rather than give up and find another. Mongolians regard him as the father of their nation and this movie pays due respect to him in that regard.
They do screw up the history and even the flow of their story line doesn't add up. At one point in the story he has a small band of followers and in the end, he's leading a huge army of specially trained soldiers. But instead of showing how he built up his following, they instead have him be a slave then magically has an army. You can see where the history is screwed up simply by where the continuity is screwed up.
The movie was filmed in Mongolian, and the non native speakers seem to have trouble with the language but its cool to have the proper language for the setting. Having the proper language, culture and setting for the story greatly enhances the results.
The battle scenes had many tactical problems. Archers using European draws. Foot archers in plain sight when such an ambush would have had them hidden from the targets. Weird masks were frequently used which I have never seen any historical reference for. The elite Mangudai vanguard gets slaughtered in hand to hand rather than being mounted archers which would have torn up the enemy lines at little cost. It was an exciting battle, just not a steppe nomad battle. And the smaller skirmishes had similar problems.
The biggest problem that really made no sense is that the movies seems to spend an awful lot of time on portraying Borte, Chinggis Khaan's wife, as always sleeping around on him. Not sure if it is some form of misogyny, or an indirect way of insulting Mongol history, or just really poor writing. (They did have her sleep her way into rescuing him from a slavery that never happened)
Overall, I'm kind of mixed on whether to describe it as a good movie or not. It definitely had some well acted and exciting moments, and was not pure slander. But there were so many issues with the movie that by the end, the group I was watching it with basically started heckling all the mistakes because there was so many it felt like Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was definitely better than Genghis Khan starring Omar Sherif, but (acting aside) it left a worse impression on me than The Conqueror with John Wayne.
I would recommend this film, but with serious disclaimers. There are much better films coming out of Asia, both on this subject from other countries and from Kazakhstan on other topics. It is an improvement for this director over his previous work (Nomad: The Warrior) though this movie had a lot of room for improvement. This is supposed to be the first of a trilogy. If they can get the history more accurate while keeping their others standards the same, it will be worth following. |
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