Film Review

09 January 2009 03:37 BST

10,000 BC

Directed by Roland Emmerich, out March 13th in cinemas, starring Steven Strait, Camille Bell, Cliff Curtis, Omar Sharif, running time 109 mins.

In a nutshell...

Visually impressive, emotionally void, shamelessly cliched.

What's it all about?

10,000 BC is the story of 'the first hero', and sets dreadlocked hunter-warrior D'Leh and his persecuted people within an epic landscape of snow-topped mountains, empty plains and gargantuan woolly mammoths. That is until a band of mercenaries pillage their settlement and ride off with the villagers in chains, unleashing a migration to a bizarre range of landscapes – all culminating in what appears to be the imperial seat of almighty Ancient Egypt. D'Leh's quest to 'free his people' is also intertwined with personal battles: firstly to win back the beautiful blue-eyed Evolet - bequeathed him by superstition – and secondly to unearth the secrets of his father's 'betrayal'. Massive liberties are taken with history, and the construction of the pyramids is brought millennia forward, a surprising move for a film with such a time-specific title.

Who's in it?

A low-key cast means that the vision of German director Roland Emmerich is on centre stage. He has previously let his imagination loose on futuristic cityscapes, with box office darling Independence Day (1996) providing laughs and suspense as Will Smith confronts an alien invasion, and The Day After Tomorrow (2004) submerging the Statue of Liberty up to her neck as New York and Jake Gyllenhaal face climate devastation. The man triumphing against the odds against 10,000 BC's generic prehistoric imagery is Steven Strait (star of supernatural thriller The Covenant) – and the damsel in distress is Camilla Belle of 2006's When a Stranger Calls remake. Omar Sharif, veteran star of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, provides the voice of earthy wisdom as the epic's narrator.

As an example...

D'Leh tells a young Evolet: "You see that light? It is like you. It will never go out."

- The crack team of travelling hunters cross a towering mountain range (the Himalayas?) and step straight into a rainforest, where they happen upon the kidnapped villagers – and a set of massive killer chickens.

Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars

The acting and storyline are too wooden to garner any Academy interest. The special effects are at times spellbinding, but battle-scene imagery may still be too influenced by Lord of the Rings and others to merit recognition.

What the others say

"With performances, true to form, lacking the depth of a birdbath, 10,000 BC instead delivers an absorbing flight of fancy." Guardian

"The movie recalls the overblown Hollywood biblical epics of the 1950s, with all their attendant anachronisms and free-floating cheese." - MTV

So is it any good?

A few shots make the hairs stand on end, but these are only testament to the power of digital animation, and the timeless romance of a bearded warrior with a six-pack leading a battle-charge in slo-mo.

The best moment is surely the thrilling sight of stampeding woolly mammoths in the opening sequence – and later on the slopes of the pyramids. The beasts are iconic of 'prehistory' and give the film a sense of identity in time.

But the rest is highly unoriginal and uninspiring. Frodo and company crossed the mountains in Lord of the Rings – and D'Leh's journey also draws on stunning New Zealand landscapes, spiralling panoramic shots, intense orchestral sound, and several "we must go on" grimaces from the leading man. Strait then parodies Orlando Bloom's ordinary-man-turned-unifier in Kingdom of Heaven as he becomes the unwilling leader of freedom-loving tribes against repressive slave-holding emperor-Gods.

Imagery throughout echoes Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, while the motifs of old wise lady and the gift of seeds that D'Leh is given fall into line with Hiawatha and other ancient tales. A lack of imagination with flaky yellow face-paint also leaves a tribe of battle-ready warriors looking more like a team of Aussies after a paint-balling trip.

And each new development in the storyline dissipates the drama of the mammoth-chase. Painfully cliched images of the hero sitting aloof from his fellow adventurers are littered throughout the film, hammering home the idea of a man uncomfortable with his destiny. And where Lord of the Rings builds up a sense of struggle as hope evaporates and is rediscovered, 10,000 BC makes it all too easy. The trail of the stolen villagers is followed as routinely as the clues of a treasure hunt. And the near empty prehistoric globe they are so rapidly traversing yields a new tribe with intertwined destiny at every turn. The obsession with western lead actors meanwhile makes the Yagahl people themselves a bizarre mix of Caucasian and Himalayan, sporting Bond villain accents.

The difficulty of distinguishing between history and legend is hinted at by the array of supernatural beasts on show and the prevalence of superstition through the film – but even the 'epic' version of D'Leh's story that we are supposedly seeing is drained of dramatic tension by poor acting and unoriginal episodes.

"If you start making movies for film critics, you've lost," Emmerich told the Guardian. His 'movies for the masses' approach may be refreshingly honest, but crowd-pleasing cinema comes much better than 10,000 BC.

3/10

Nick Jacobs

To watch the 10,000 BC trailer on inthenews.co.uk, click here

Test your film knowledge and win...