Spring Break
'10,000 B.C.' enjoyable for myth lovers, not groundbreaking
By: Ben Johnson
Issue date: 3/19/08 Section: Aggielife
What do you get when you take the basic plot of Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto," the climactic moments from "300," a few wooly mammoths, a saber-tooth tiger and throw them together? It's director Roland Emmerich's next big flick, "10,000 B.C."
D'Leh (Steven Strait) is a mammoth hunter of the Yagahl, a tribe of prehistoric humans living in a snow-laden mountain range. Evolet (Camilla Belle) is the blue-eyed love of his life. Their peaceful and harmonious existence is disrupted when a group of slavers attack and make off with almost the entire village. Only a handful of the Yagahl remain. With spear in hand, D'Leh sets off to rescue his people and his woman from the clutches of an advanced, bloodthirsty civilization.
"10,000 B.C." has all the ear-marks of a typical Hollywood blockbuster:
costumes are elaborate, sets and locales are sprawling and stunning, visual and special effects are used extensively. But the one element missing from the blockbuster formula here is big-named actors. Apart from Belle and Omar Sharif, who narrates the film, the majority of the cast is not comprised of easily recognizable faces or names. This works to the film's advantage by making the story more believable, although believability is not always top priority. None of the actors turn in impressive performances, but neither do they perform so poorly as to be distracting.
Another element that sets "10,000 B.C." apart from similar films is the regulated use of visual effects. Where most films veer too far into the realm of computer generated imagery, "10,000 B.C." uses special and visual effects as tools to tell the story. The sequence depicting the Yagahl hunting a herd of mammoths is thrilling. It never takes the awful plunge into hyper-surrealism in which audiences can do nothing but groan. Fortunately, the majority of the film operates this way in regards to visual effects.
Harold Kloser's score for the film is much like the film itself. It's not groundbreaking or pioneering, but it's not entirely bad either. It's a powerful score and relies as much on heavy percussion as it does on strong melodies.
Whether you believe our planet is millions of years old or as young as 6,000 years, part of the fun of the movie is imaging that a legend like this exists somewhere in the untold annals of history. As a purely speculative pseudo-fantasy, the film succeeds. Emmerich and his prehistoric epic will doubtlessly sit near the top of the box office for the next week or so, until disappearing and re-emerging on DVD loaded with bonus features a few months from now. "10,000 B.C." is ultimately nothing that audiences haven't seen already. The movie is fairly innocuous: there's no sexuality, no language and even the violence is virtually bloodless. Once you put the whole thing together and slap on a predictable ending, you have a movie that you'll enjoy for about the hour and a half you'll spend watching it.
D'Leh (Steven Strait) is a mammoth hunter of the Yagahl, a tribe of prehistoric humans living in a snow-laden mountain range. Evolet (Camilla Belle) is the blue-eyed love of his life. Their peaceful and harmonious existence is disrupted when a group of slavers attack and make off with almost the entire village. Only a handful of the Yagahl remain. With spear in hand, D'Leh sets off to rescue his people and his woman from the clutches of an advanced, bloodthirsty civilization.
"10,000 B.C." has all the ear-marks of a typical Hollywood blockbuster:
costumes are elaborate, sets and locales are sprawling and stunning, visual and special effects are used extensively. But the one element missing from the blockbuster formula here is big-named actors. Apart from Belle and Omar Sharif, who narrates the film, the majority of the cast is not comprised of easily recognizable faces or names. This works to the film's advantage by making the story more believable, although believability is not always top priority. None of the actors turn in impressive performances, but neither do they perform so poorly as to be distracting.
Another element that sets "10,000 B.C." apart from similar films is the regulated use of visual effects. Where most films veer too far into the realm of computer generated imagery, "10,000 B.C." uses special and visual effects as tools to tell the story. The sequence depicting the Yagahl hunting a herd of mammoths is thrilling. It never takes the awful plunge into hyper-surrealism in which audiences can do nothing but groan. Fortunately, the majority of the film operates this way in regards to visual effects.
Harold Kloser's score for the film is much like the film itself. It's not groundbreaking or pioneering, but it's not entirely bad either. It's a powerful score and relies as much on heavy percussion as it does on strong melodies.
Whether you believe our planet is millions of years old or as young as 6,000 years, part of the fun of the movie is imaging that a legend like this exists somewhere in the untold annals of history. As a purely speculative pseudo-fantasy, the film succeeds. Emmerich and his prehistoric epic will doubtlessly sit near the top of the box office for the next week or so, until disappearing and re-emerging on DVD loaded with bonus features a few months from now. "10,000 B.C." is ultimately nothing that audiences haven't seen already. The movie is fairly innocuous: there's no sexuality, no language and even the violence is virtually bloodless. Once you put the whole thing together and slap on a predictable ending, you have a movie that you'll enjoy for about the hour and a half you'll spend watching it.
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