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Movie Review: 10,000 B.C.
by Bill Wine
A prehistoric hunter leads a group on a dangerous rescue mission in search of the kidnapped woman he loves.
RATING: PG-13
GENRE: Drama
RELEASE DATE: March 7, 2008
RUNNING TIME: 109 minutes
VIOLENCE FACTOR: There are sequences of intense action and violence, involving hunting and combat, but all are appropriate and none are overly graphic.
BAD WORDS: None
RACY? Not at all
GRANDS:
CRITIQUE:
Once again, the movies register as the greatest time-travel machine yet invented.
The destination this time: 12,000 years ago.
10,000 B.C. is a prehistory lesson — with liberties galore being taken that will send history purists running up the aisles. Hey, with B.C. also standing for "Bring Children," better historical inaccuracy than hysterical accuracy, no?
Narrated by Omar Sharif, 10,000 B.C. is a deliberate but absorbing action-adventure odyssey about a young mammoth hunter named D'Leh (the German word for hero, backwards), played by Steven Strait. D'Leh leads a small group of hunters on an arduous journey across a vast, unfamiliar land to rescue the woman he loves, played by Camilla Belle, who has been kidnapped by an army of invading, slave-trading warlords during an attack on his remote mountain village.
Along the way, hunter-gatherer-turned-warrior D'Leh fulfills a prophecy, braves the harsh elements, encounters a civilization he didn't know existed, and tries to avoid the saber-toothed tigers and other fearsome predators that lay in wait.
Director Roland Emmerich has made his share of epic-scale adventures, including Independence Day, The Patriot, Stargate, and The Day After Tomorrow. In a way, this is his rejoinder to that last title: think of it as his The Day Before Yesterday.
It's a natural-history museum diorama come to life, with a plot that's generic and perhaps derivative. But it retains admirable production values, including smoothly integrated special effects and visual majesty, compliments of the mountains, deserts, rivers, and jungles, that decorate the vast landscapes.
The movie this one most recalls is Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, but without the R-rated graphic violence or the subtitles: these prehistoric characters speak English, thank you very much (a convention, by the way, that does little harm).
10,000 B.C. is a temporal trip worth taking.
GP Rating System:
Three Grands = Bravo, don't miss it.
Two Grands = Good enough, don't dismiss it.
One Grand = Okay, even if we dis it.
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