THE 13TH WARRIOR
A Touchstone Pictures release

review by Renfield

It's no Camelot.

Premise: Banished Arab ambassador hooks up with some Viking chaps who are out on a mission to defend a town from a horde of cannibal headhunters.

Review: Normally I like Viking movies. Something about them just harkens me back to my celtic nordic roots. I really wanted to like this movie too. Banderas is his usual unispiring self. You know the strong silent type. The Viking cast was pretty good as Vikings. It was good to see an international cast for once and not see Bruce Willis or some other mega-dope doning a wig and gettin' nordic. It had great cinematography, great production design, and a fiar number of decapitations. One small problem though, they didn't take thier time to hone down a better script!

Essentially the major flaws boil down to this: The dialog is pretty basic by the numbers. The script is just another reworking of "The Magnificent Seven" which is of course just a reworking of "the Seven Samurai". Except director John Tiernan fruitlessly added six more warriors who basically get thier heads laped off in the first battle. I think the thing that really killed me when I saw this movie is the fact that THIS WAS A STORY LINE ON XENA, WARRIOR PRINCESS a year ago and it was done ten times better!

But if you are just looking for some momentary mind candy, go see "the 13th Warrior". At the very least, you can sneak some booze into the theater and do shots whenever you see a decapitated head!

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