The 13th Warrior

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13th Warrior is a lucky 7
by Joe De Matteo

Super HUGE*

     Well, I loved the book and I loved the movie even though they're not exactly the same, that's a first.  Antonio Banderas and all the Vikings are perfectly cast.  The movie is so good that I remember scenes from the book with mental pictures of the actors.

     This is a must see.  Don't ruin it by thinking it's the greatest movie you'll ever see, it's not, it's just a great ride.

HUGE* 
      I just watched this movie again-my 8th viewing-and I'm compelled to upgrade my rating.  The 13th Warrior just gets better each time I see it.  Buliwyf (Vladimir Kulich) is a man's man, wow, this guy is the hero every little boy wants to grow up to be.  Herger the Joyous (Dennis Storhøi) is how every class clown visualizes himself, and then remembers himself as have had been once he becomes a senior-citizen; and Antonio Banderas as Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan Ibn Rashid Ibn Abbas Ibn Bashirevery has to be the graphic every romantic scholar has as his desktop. 
     The religious view of Herger regarding ones fate is pure: "The Old Father wrote the end of your life long ago, go and hind in a hole if you wish, but you won't live one moment longer: your fate is fixed.  Fear profit man nothing."
     You want an adventurer's prayer, well here's the Norsemen's prayer before battle: 

    Wow.  Where's my sword?
     I have to admit that Ahmed's prayer before the battle he believed he'd die in had me scrambling to find where it came from.  He was asking the "Merciful Father," for forgiveness for "all we aught to have thought, but never thought; all we aught to have said, but never said; and all we aught to have done, but never done."  
     Whether in print or on film, it's lines like these that make a great Romantic Adventure great.  They make you want to be more, to strive for more.  Maybe even to acknowledge that there is something outside of you, as Jean-Pierre (Michael Lonsdale) pointed out to Sam (Robert De Niro) in Ronin, that is worth making a stand for, fighting for, even worth the ultimate sacrifice. 
      And it's lines like these that make a movie eminently rewatchable. 
     So, forgive me my original error, The 13th Warrior is HUGE.

A Rare and Incredible Adventure: The 13^th Warrior
by Christian De Matteo

HUGE

Two genres have all but disappeared from the films of yesteryear:  The Western and The Swashbuckler Adventure.  There was a time when Errol Flynn ruled the Swashbuckler Adventure and John Wayne was the consummate cowboy.  For whatever reasons all fads end, these two have gone mostly by the wayside, with only the occasional genre entry.

With The 13^th Warrior comes the latest of a tiny amount of entries into the Swashbuckler film.  And it’s a great one.  If I could explain why the movie wasn’t a blockbuster, I could make a lot of money for some big time studio.  The only guess I can hazard as to its lackluster performance at the box office would come from my knowledge that the studio did a terrible job of advertising it.  But why it didn’t prevail despite that like The 6^th Sense, I know not.

What I do know, however, is that Die Hard director John McTiernan has resurrected the genre and lifted it high.  Warrior is incredible, an astounding adventure, exciting, invigorating and cool.  Cool.  Not cool in the hip slacker sense, but cool in the Clint Eastwood standing on the bridge waiting calmly for the villain in the school bus in Dirty Harry sense.  Just cool.

Warrior is the story of a young Arab man, played perfectly by an unlikely Antonio Banderas (Desperado, Assassins), who is exiled from his land due to a woman (ain’t that always the case) and made an ambassador to the northlands.  There he meets the Northmen and falls into an adventure to save an imperiled kingdom from some mysterious and lethal enemy which may or may not be human.

The story goes from there.  As soon as it started, I was pulled in and quickly found myself on the edge of my seat, desperate during the hellish and hectic battles, and liking all of the barbarian men he was fighting beside.  The story is of a man becoming a man in the most primitive and true sense, one of those movies that makes men of my age wonder what would happen if our mettle were ever tested in just one of the many battles fought in the film.

This is a movie of heroes and villains, good and evil, men and… well, real men.  Men in the ultimate, non-politically correct, balls-of-steel, courageous, meaning of the word.  Hell, even the women are men here!  Ass kickers every one, survivors, and steel-nerved.  And Eben—Banderas—learning just what that all means.

            The film is fun, exciting, riveting and perfectly done.  The script is perfect.  There isn’t a bad or unnecessary line, the dialogue is sparse and real and the narration is never over or under done.  It is also beautifully filmed, though dark at times, the locations are incredible.  If more movies were made now like this, I would be very happy.

The 13^th Warrior
by Michael Flanagan

Solid

            Antonio Banderas' The 13^th Warrior, an epic style "Norse Braveheart" is not the type of movie you'll leave remembering for the rest of your life.  Sure, you could respond with, "Yeah, but what movie is?"  And I'd respond with, "Braveheart.  But not The 13^th Warrior."

            The film has many attributes of a good epic film.  It has grandiose, well-directed battle scenes.  Swords and other sharp or largely blunt objects collide on more than one occasion.  Heads are cut off, loves are lost, friends save friends and friends die.  The story takes the hero across a large sea to a distant land, where he must learn the customs of his new battle-friends.  The style in this regard is probably the most creative aspect of the film.  Banderas must learn the Norse language, and therefore listens at the campfire while we the audience hear the language slowly evolve into English.  The evolution brings to mind Star Trek's universal translator, but as long as you forget that, it's actually a novel approach to the problem.

            Unfortunately, the film does fall a bit short.  Scenes dangle on longer than they should.  At times, the cinematography leaves much of the battle in shadow, and the next day we learn that several of our favorite characters have died.  The dialogue gets a bit boring at times, while the relationships between the characters seem to grow on their own, with no real assistance from the plot.

            I would recommend the film to someone looking for a quick action-packed epic on a slow weeknight in January.  But, as is with this review, that's about it.

The film omits an explanation of who the "mist monsters" actually are. In the novel, author Michael Crichton reveals they were the descendants of the Neanderthals.

 Adapting "Beowulf" for his novel and then for this movie, Michael Crichton changed some of the original names for ones that sounded similar: Beowulf is here named Buliwyf, Hygelac becomes Hyglak, the Grendel transformed into the Wendol, etc.

 When Melchisidek is communicating with the Northman who speaks Greek, they're not actually speaking Greek; they're speaking Latin.

 The budget was $85 million.  The theatrical release earned a domestic $32.694 million.  “Ain’t nobody saw’n it.”

 Recognize these native lands, these tossing seas, these darkened caves?  You might, if you’ve ever been to Canada.  The movie was entirely filmed in British Columbia, Canada.