Conan the Barbaria (Reboot!)
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The Sword and the Sorcerer was directed by Albert Pyun and featured a triple-bladed sword with the ability to shoot each of the blades separately, a necromancer, and an “evil” warlord attempting to rule the world. The hero was a mercenary pirate with a dark past involving the Warlord, Cromwell. There were witches, a princess, and various monsters for the hero to fight during his great quest to eventually find vengeance. It was a cheap knock off for the currently successful Conan the Barbarian, starring the young Arnold Schwarzenegger. So when the studio announced the reboot of the series, I had no idea they were actually going to use a cheaper knock off of the original knock off rather than going back to any of the source material in order to create a new Conan franchise. Not one story from Robert E Howard served as source material for the new Conan film, not one shred of the original film, but they certainly did rip out The Sword and the Sorcerer pretty liberally and created a 3D “look at this sword poke out of the screen!” nightmare or what Hollywood THINKS a sword and sorcerer movie is supposed to be.
The film starts off with Conan’s birth as he is ripped from his mothers’ womb in the midst of Battle because that’s just kewl. They cast Ron Perlman as the father in order to add some legitimacy to a backstory that flat out dragged through a number of scenes that never managed to capture the emotion or imagination of the original movie. There’s a decent scene where the young Conan battles with a couple of wild Picts, but the promise of that scene means very little to the overall story. “The Riddle of Steel” is briefly introduced but quickly discarded because this ain’t THAT movie. The village is raided by a Warlord looking for the last piece of the MacGuffin Mask (it had an actual name, but you might as well call it the Unobtainium Mask or the Whooosywhatsis for all the importance it has to the story) which Conans’ father has hidden beneath his workshop. Conan is left doing the “Harmonica” thing from “Once Upon a Time in the West” for his father and is otherwise left to die by the films’ villains. Fast forward and Conan is a mercenary and he’s looking for revenge and… oh, please please please, this story is done twenty minutes into the film and the rest is just fluffed out nonsense battles, captures, successes, and minor failures before the big finale. There are no interesting characters, no one grows, there are no revelations that aren’t spelled out for you in the first twenty minutes, and this movie is GANK!!!!
The worst part being that you could see, from step one to step two, that there were opportunities for them to take the story someplace interesting and at least keep the audience interested in more than just one battle scene after another. Instead we get nonsense monsters popping up without any degree of back story…. Remember the snake from the original film? It was a pet kept by a cult of evil fanatics, it was fed worshippers on a sacrificial basis and it was there to guard the treasure that Conan and his friend are stealing. They have a “Dweller” Octopus thing in this film… why it’s there we are never shown, other than it’s there for a big battle and people get smashed and there’s cutting and chopping and angry growls from Conan and he escapes and they move on to the next battle. Remember Conan’s love interest in the first film? She saved him, she fought him, she dared him, she moved the story forward and was a character with her own strengths and weaknesses and her death meant something. This film has a love interest too… she’s in distress and screaming most of the time. Yeah. Remember James Earl Jones and his monologue about the Riddle of Steel and how the Flesh was stronger? Our new villain has an evil white goatee sticking out of his chin and he snarls a lot and expresses admiration for Conan before trying to kill him… Oh, his motivation is to raise his wife from the dead so they can take over the world. That’s it. It’s cartoonish buffoonery at its worst.
I have nothing bad to say about the actor portraying Conan. He did what the script called for him to do, he had some charisma, and he was otherwise just stuck with a bad movie surrounding what could have been a great break through performance for him. This movie sucked! The Albert Pyun rip-off was heads above and better than this garbage. If you absolutely MUST see this movie, do so when you have nothing better to do and there are two hours you simply have to occupy with mindless drivel.
2 out of 5 because it at least had a lot of battle action sequences to occupy the time you’re wasting with a nonsensical story that never goes anywhere.
You know what? I can’t let it rest… I can’t just sit here and bash some movie without offering a good recommendation to offset my warning. So, since I started this rant with a mention about Albert Pyun, I may as well end it with a recommendation for one of his films. I’ve already mentioned “The Sword and the Sorcerer” so we may as well go with a different strategy:
Nemesis.
Olivier Grunier was a French kick-boxing champion in the 90’s who hit the B-Movie circuit with a number of starring roles that included just about every formulaic “action” trope there was. But one of the few standouts was a little sci-fi action flick that featured Grunier as a Cyborg police officer in a mostly post-apocalyptic world. Much of the plot is kind of hokey and confusing, involving the potential capture of a major criminal and the exchange of information as humans struggle against what they see as a growing robotic threat to their humanity. What ultimately saves this film are the performances and action sequences, much of which revolves around the former Kickboxing champion as he tries to blast his way free through warring factions. Grunier is perfectly cast as a man struggling to maintain his humanity despite the cybernetic implants that make him “better” than he once was… of course, this is probably because Grunier is stiff and lifeless (though oddly charismatic) in just about every other role so this one seems perfectly suited for him. But the film really shines when his captain is on the screen, played by Tim Thomerson. He borders on the excessive ham that could ruin a major Hollywood production but absolutely shines here when he’s taunting Grunier. “Top of the line, Alex!”
There are some great side characters played by B-genre vets and some pretty nifty effects for the time period. Stuntwork is off the hook and Pyun manages to reign in his usual strategy of taking the story in odd directions that never pay off. The story, despite being a little muddled, is pretty straightforward and easy to follow so we’re not scratching our heads by the end of the film.
3.5 out of 5 may seem a kindness, but I actually really enjoyed this film and have watched it a few times over the years. It always gives me a little bit of joy and is a great little popcorn action flick.
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