Take a little Braveheart, take a little Beowulf. Mix them together with a bit of The Goonies, and you’ve got yourself The 13th Warrior.
Here, at last, is a movie that is exactly what you expect it’s going to be. From the opening scene, where Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan (Banderas) is shipped across the world for political reasons, to the end, where Ahmed finds himself an unlikely hero amidst a group of Norse warriors, this is a traditional, big, action movie from start to finish.
There’s no mysterious surprise or turn of events. The bad guys (aka “The Eaters of the Dead,” taking their name from the Michael Crichton book on which this film is based) are just a bunch of bad guys with no reason for being bad. The good guys are a bunch of Nordic barbarians that spit, insult one another, and seem to enjoy pain. Banderas is an Asian Zorro. The movie clocks in just under two hours, whereupon you get up from your seat and leave the theater, trying to form an opinion about what you’ve just seen.
And I found that incredibly difficult to do. The 13th Warrior is simply without thrills and excitement. It’s also without any huge negatives that would compel me to tell you to avoid the movie. It’s just there.
And that’s hardly worth getting excited about, for good or for bad. Skip this one, and check out the other McTiernan film playing right now: The Thomas Crown Affair.
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