It took me a whole week to make it through this movie. This movie first came out around the same time as 300 and was portrayed as the same “style” of a historic/action movie.
What a piece of crap.
If only movies could be reviewed so easily, but that one sentence really does put it into perspective. For all the originality, strength, and power that a movie like 300 had, this movie was lacking the two elements that made 300 so good: a plot and killer fight/action scenes.
This movie is a remake of a Swedish film of the same title from the Late-80’s (Wikipedia entry - which was nominated for an Academy Awad for Best Foreign Language Film in 1988), and maybe it’s just because I’m ignorant of Late-80’s Historic Swedish Films, but it seems like the plot was drunkenly written in a bar somewhere in downtown Stockholm.
An Indian woman (Michelle Trush) finds a young Viking boy, Ghost (Karl Urban - who is going to be playing Dr. ‘Bones’ McCoy in the upcoming Star Trek prequel movie), among wreckage of a boat. Was he left behind by his father after refusing to kill innocent Indians in a raid? Did the boat crash and he’s the only surviving member? Those are details that writer Laeta Kalogridis was too busy killing seals to take into account.
This young Viking boy is then raised amongst Indians, but is never fully accepted because of his 
need for vengeance! Douchebaggery, though, is fully accepted by the Indian tribe as young Ghost is continually harassed by angry faced Blackwing (Jay Tavare).
Of course Ghost’s pale skin and enormous Viking wiener is enough to ensnare the beautiful Starfire (Moon Bloodgood, who is mega-hot and was featured in 2005 Maxim’s annual Hot 100 ranked #99).
To quote IMDB’s plot synopsis “when the Vikings arrive again 15 years later with no apparent purpose other than to try to kill all the Indians that they can and take their land , no one but the white man is capable of fighting back in any way.” Not to mention take the time to give Starfire a good once over under a rock in the middle of the forrest. Nothing as enjoyable as hot mossy sex while escaping Viking captors. After being captured, Ghost is able to hoodwink the Vikings by having them fall off a snowy mountain. Apparently Vikings don’t know very much about snow, mountains, or icey rivers.
I’ve sat through some bad movies, but this was pretty hard to take. I’m a big fan of needlessly bloody movies and the lack of plot wouldn’t bother me as long as mindless gore could make up for it. But the worst part of all was using CGI for blood spilling. Who uses CGI for blood spilling! Sword goes in belly of Viking, obviously fake CGI blood squirts out. To make it worse, it seems like they used the same graphic over and over again. Seriously, CGI for spilling blood?
If there is any benefit to the movie it’s the appearance of Clancy Brown (of Highlander and Shawshank Redemption fame, but I’ll always think of him as the voice of Mr. Krabs on Spongebob Squarepants) as the movies antagonist, Gunnar. Sure he’s speaking some sort of Nordic dialect the whole time, sure he’s completely covered in makeup and armor for the whole movie, but it doesn’t matter, Clancy Brown is still the f’ing man. He might be the only good thing about that movie, especially since I have a propensity to give a lot of acting credit to people speaking in languages I don’t understand.
Overall Pathfinder is a piece of crap. In my hopes of cool fight scenes between Indian and Viking, hot naked Indian love making, and Clancy Brown lifting up someone with one hand while laughing in their face, I’m instead left with a really sad attempt to try to make a good movie with a terrible premise, and for some reason this movie took itself a wee-bit too seriously. Come on guys, Viking… Indian… swords… blood… guts… Moon Bloodgood’s hot little body, it’s just not that hard.
Posted in Movies, Pathfinder | Tags: Pathfinder
