The 13th Warrior/Ravenous

It was cannibal double feature night tonight at Mark’s Place! (Well, ok. I didn’t watch either of these at my house, but that really doesn’t matter here. Nothing makes any sense on my page, anyway.)

Since meeting my friend Mark (who is now reading this from Japan–and is probably the only one reading it) I can’t pass up a good cannibal flick. Or a bad one, for that matter. Although I still need to find a copy of Cannibal Holocaust.

The 13th Warrior is the second John McTiernan movie to come out this summer. (The first one was The Thomas Crown Affair.) Of course, this one was made sometime last year, so it’s not really that big a deal that he’s put out two big action flicks in one summer.

Anyway, I read this book when I was about a junior in high school. I thought it was really good back then. Of course, when you’re sixteen a book with lots of blood and gore is always really cool. Basically, it’s Beowulf. I guess it’s the way it could have really happened, but Michael Crichton did us all a favor by making Beowulf easy to read and disguised it by calling it Eaters Of The Dead. (As Woody Allen says, “Never take a class that requires you to read Beowulf.” I can understand why.)

That said, and since most people haven’t read the original or, probably, the re-write, Antonio Banderas is Ahmahd ibn Fahdalan ibn ibn ibn ibn… He is an Arab who is sent in exile for falling for a the woman of a friend of the King’s. He and his interpreter (Omar Sharif–Where’s he been lately?) go to the land of the Norsemen. (That’s Vikings to you and me, kids.) Soon enough, a young boy comes with news of his village. They seem to be being attacked by a bunch of monsters from the mountains, including a big “glow worm.” (Read: dragon!!)

Now the spiritual advisor tells them that they need to send thirteen warriors to battle these monsters and save the neighboring village. The thirteenth one has to be an un-Norseman. That would be Antonio. (This is also where the movie starts, with him on a boat during a storm flashing back to the events that sent him to that boat. With lines like, “It was not always like this…” I was expecting him to say, “The name’s Ash, and I’m a slave.“)

This starts the whole adventure off and the movie picks up a bit. We get a lot of gory battle scenes, some pretty good shots of half-eaten corpses and Antonio puking off a bridge.

Overall I would say that the movie was ok. One review said that the battle scenes were the best medieval battles since Braveheart (one of my top ten favorite movies of all time–Sorry, Mark). I thought I would really be in for a treat! Then I realized, there ain’t been just a whole lot of medieval battle flicks made since Braveheart. These scenes were cool, but they were pretty much all shot in the dark. There could have only been about twenty guys running around flailing their maces around and we wouldn’t have known any different.

The attention to period was great, but the attention to weather wasn’t. At one point the guys build a fire in the rain. Later they say, when it’s raining, “at least we won’t have to worry about fire.” Huh? Then there’s the fact that one of the shots during Antonio’s big horse riding scene shows rain pouring down on him. In every other shot the sky is perfectly dry. I guess that’s how it rains in North Country. Second by second.

I guess the main problem was the script. It really spelled stuff out for us. One of the guys I went with said at one point, “Come on! Give us a little more credit!” I agree. There were times that they were still in the dark about stuff that I could see a mile away. Then they proceeded to explain it to us. Then they introduce another spiritual woman somewhere in the middle of the movie after people have died with, “There is a woman who can help.” Well, why didn’t you say so before?

I guess we don’t go to this kind of movie for the story and script, though. And it wasn’t all bad. There were some funny bits that were actually meant to be funny. Not a bad flick by any means, but not really a good one, either. Worth a matinee price if you’re into that sort of thing, which I sometimes am. Clearly, Thomas Crown was his best movie this year.

Ravenous, on the other hand, was totally different. I saw this one on video (it’s coming out this Tuesday) and I can see why a lot of people didn’t like it.

In this one, Guy Pearce plays Captain Boyd, a man who has survived the horrors of the Mexican-American War by playing dead and suddenly became a hero. After that, though, he gets sent basically into exile (see a trend for today’s movies?) to a remote fort peopled by eight incredibly bored people including Jeffrey Jones (one of my favorite character actors), Jeremy Davies (Saving Private Ryan and Spanking The Monkey) and David Arquette.

After a few uneventful days, Robert Carlyle (The Full Monty and Trainspotting) pops up nearly dead. He tells the story of his party being trapped in a cave in the dead of winter. They had to eat all of their oxen and his dog. That only lasted a month, though. (You know, they could have eaten a little less for a while. That would have stretched the food out longer and they wouldn’t have had to have become cannibals. What are they, diabetic?) Then they did the deed. They started eating each other starting with the first to die. Then their commander went crazy and started eating everyone.

Meanwhile, we find out from the resident Indians that cannibalism makes people grow stronger. They consume the souls and strengths of the people they eat. Unfortunately, they also start to want more and more.

Basically, everyone starts dying as they go search for the survivors of the first party. (You should have come to the second party. I didn’t get home till three in the morning. I was blind for two days.) I won’t tell you why they die, that would ruin the surprise. (There’s even a pretty unnecessary “twist” ending that shows just how healing the powers of human flesh are.)

This is an intensely sick movie, just like I like ‘em. There’s nothing really wrong with the movie, it’s just a little stupid. There were so many ways for these people to avoid cannibalism. I guess that would have canceled the movie, though. At one point they have Guy fall into a pit with one of his dead captains. He then finds out that he has a compound fracture in his leg. (That’s where the bone is sticking out. YOUCH!!!) He somehow gets the bone back in and waits it out! How long did it take to heal up enough to walk on? I don’t know. They didn’t say. It must have been a little shorter than usual since he was eating the captain, but it still would take months. And if they couldn’t last one a bunch of oxen and a dog for more than a month, how did he last on one guy? It’s little things like that that bugged me about this flick.

Another thing: Was it a comedy? Or was it serious? If it was a drama then they went about it all wrong. If it was a comedy, how could they take something as serious as cannibalism and make a comedy out of it.

Ok. All of my friends reading this are thinking, “What? Mark’s gone soft?” Yeah, right. I’m the guy who gave Cannibal: The Musical a great review. You know I’m kidding. Cannibalism is one thing that should be made fun of. It’s a very strange thing and is very easy to have fun with. Cannibals are fun!

Speaking of Cannibal: The Musical, there’s a lot of parallels with this one. The guy being accused of cannibalism who may or may not have gone off his nut. The interesting use of music. (This one has a song being played during a supposedly intense chase scene that sounds like it was lifted out of Raising Arizona.) Lots of over the top gore. A jolly time had by all!

It also had the feel of a Sam Raimi or Robert Rodriguez flick, either of which probably could have made this into a great movie. Unfortunately it was made by Antonia Bird who was last really heard from with Mad Love. No wonder his other movies haven’t been widely released. Even Priest didn’t save him.

If you’re into cannibal flicks, give it a try. It’s a lot of fun. No masterpiece (as one of the guys on the IMDb calls it..who are you?!?!), but it’s worth a look. All others, beware. It’s a bad movie that I probably shouldn’t have liked as much as I did.