Friday, March 7, 2008

Movie review: 10,000 B.C.

Days of mammoths, shamans and hairspray.

By John P. Meyer

10,000 B.C.

This is a sweeping odyssey into a mythical age of prophesies and gods, when spirits rule the land and mighty mammoths shake the earth. In a remote mountain tribe, the young hunter, D'Leh, has found his heart's passion--the beautiful Evolet. When a band of mysterious warlords raid his village and kidnap Evolet, D'Leh is forced to lead a small group of hunters to pursue the warlords to the end of the world to save her. Driven by destiny, the unlikely band of warriors must battle saber-tooth tigers and prehistoric predators and, at their heroic journey's end, they uncover a Lost Civilization. Their ultimate fate lies in an empire beyond imagination, where great pyramids reach into the skies. Here they will take their stand against a powerful god who has brutally enslaved their people.

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on 10,000 B.C.

Remember Clan of the Cave Bear, in which a young orphan girl from a foreign tribe is taken in and raised by the locals? How about 2006's Apocalypto, in which nomadic folk are captured by raiders and spirited away to a land of step pyramids and urban sprawl? And remember how, in Jurassic Park, monstrous extinct creatures shambled about interacting with the human characters by means of CG animation?

Well, say hello to my little 109-minute movie friend, 10,000 B.C. - which filmmaker Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow) could easily have titled Clan of the Mammoth Bumps Up Against the Apocalypse in Pleistocene Park. (Except for the fact that that's just too dang long for a title. Wait a minute...)

Basically, we've got this band of big woolly pachyderm hunters camped out in the same range of New Zealand mountains recently vacated by the filmmaking crew from the Lord of the Rings movies. Good thing, because there just aren't enough mammoths to go around, even without an extra film crew to consider. Fortunately for these simplistic, Rastafarian-do'd-but-otherwise-perfectly- ordinary-looking early humans, they have a shaman on hand named "Old Mother" (Mona Hammond, chanting and swaying and gazing internally for all she's worth) who lets them know about a hero among them who will - in the fullness of time - take up the white spear and lead the tribe into the new age when mammoth meat becomes more of a seasonal delicacy than standard daily fare.

Recall the orphaned child reference? Well, the child in this story, whose band has been wiped out by "four-legged demons," is Evolet, played by Camilla Belle, whose ethereal blue eyes must have been added through CG, since she appears to actually have brown ones. According to Old Mother's prophecy, whoever ends up pulling hero duty will also end up hutting up with Evolet. Nice work if you can get it.

"Careful, fellas - don't slip on the white rain."

We're told quite a lot of this stuff through the agency of stately off-camera narration provided by Omar Sharif, who's old enough to know a thing or two about mammoths, I'll bet. Quite often during these narrative interludes he gets to say stuff like "and so it came to pass," which I'm betting he hasn't uttered since his Lawrence of Arabia days.

The youthful hunter who will take up the white spear and then at some point hopefully cozy up to Evolet turns out to be a chap named D'Leh (brother to D'oh, perhaps?), played by Steven Strait, who can actually be made to look a lot like Colin Farrell with the employment of sufficient imagination. Ironically, D'Leh's mentor and best bud is a friend of his absent father's named Tic'Tic (Cliff Curtis). Are you getting it? Tic'Tic and D'Leh? Time marches on, if only you'd pick up your leathersacked feet?

Sort of looks like Colin Farrell, right? Anyone?

Anyhow, back at the range (mountain range, that is), those unsavory "four-legged demons" raid the happy mammoth hunter camp, slaying folks willy-nilly and making off with the more able-bodied younger folk who've thus far avoided being slain. Including Evolet, as D'Leh observes from behind a rock outcropping where he's conveniently gone to crop rocks. He and Tic'Tic (tempus fugit) soon take off after the horsemen (D'oh! I mean, "four legged demons") only to find themselves hampered by the occurrence of "white rain," referring to "snow," which these simple folk appear not to have an actual word for even though they routinely converse on complex topics of trust and obligation and mammoth-spearing tactics, and are in fact surrounded by snowcapped New Zealand mountains. But at least they're conversant in hairspray products.

We now enter into another phase of the story, which I'll refer to as Phase Zulu, because we appear to have entered another movie. The only manner in which the appellation "Zulu" may fail to apply relates to the fact that the word "Zulu" begins with a "Z," perhaps implying that this is the last movie to which 10,000 B.C. will refer back - which ends up not being anywhere near the case. Regardless, Tic'Tic and D'Leh do seem to have stumbled into a fair semblance of a Zulu village populated by tribesmen who might pass for Zulus, at least to the extent that Tic'Tic and D'Leh can be said to pass for mammoth hunters. And when the villagers get a load of D'Leh's way with cat domestication, they happily drop everything to help the fellows on their quest to recover their kidnapped mates. (It helps that the leader of the villagers - Nakudu, played by Joel Virgel - has had his son kidnapped by the same dastardly crew.)

Hearken back to my Lawrence of Arabia reference. Recall, in that great movie, the sequence in which "'awrence" strikes out - against all wise counsel - across the broiling desert sands to attack the port citadel of Aqaba by land? Well, D'Leh pulls that same stunt, leading his volunteers into what shapes up to be a dessicating death trap, but thanks to another plotline - the one in the Nativity story - D'Leh decides to follow a star which leads him and his worthies unerringly to the City of God. Here, the marauding "four-legged demons" have delivered their human cargo to the evil priests who rule this Giza-like domain in the service of a divinity who is really tall and wears a slew of veils to hide his presumed extreme ugliness.

Pyramid building can be fun - for all but those who actually build them

Turns out this stone age exercise in urbanization is far from egalitarian, and in fact the pyramid construction crews could use a good labor union, what with the ongoing whippings and human sacrifices and all. Fortunately, the God-servers prove to have extremely lax perimeter security, allowing D'Leh and Nakudu to come and go among the captive slave laborers pretty much at will. Leading one to wonder why they don't all just up and leave on their own one night, but of course there would go the dramatic tension.

The climactic episode, such as it is, involves a confrontation between D'Leh - riding a wave of self-confidence following his success in proving that the Living God is neither living nor, in fact, a God - and the chap referred to in the credits as Warlord (played by Affif Ben Badra, who looks and acts a lot like Sly Stallone). Warlord led the band of raiders responsible for this entire hopping-from-one-movie- set-to-another fiasco, and as such we would all be glad by this point to see him die a quick death (because a lingering one would require more time) - except for the fact that he's been rather accommodating of Evolet, if you put aside the bit where he whips her hand bloody. Bottom line, however: he's decimated the mammoth hunters and played havoc with our ability to tell what movie we're watching now, and so in good Republican fashion he must be made to pay with his life.

A moment of quiet, character-driven reflection

10,000 B.C. on the big screen, with THX sound system booming away, is certainly spectacular - it just falls a bit too far on the scarecrow side of the intellect fence for Anthropocene audiences.

MOST AMAZING THING WE LEARNED IN THE PLEISTOCENE: a diet heavy in mammoth sinew promotes sparkling oral hygiene

LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP: "I like your spirit - but I will have to break it." - Warlord to Evolet

WHY SHOULDN'T I?: "Do not eat me when I set you free." - D'Leh to saber-toothed cat

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• Todd’s Top Ten Films of 2008 (Dec. 30, 2008)
• New on DVD: In Bruges, 10,000 B.C., Definitely, Maybe, Honeydripper, Charlie Bartlett and Persepolis (June 24, 2008)

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• Arts > Movies / Film > Mainstream Movies