|
|
 |
| |
Steven Strait has a close shave in the computer-enhanced 10,000 BC |
The tooth about high-tech wizardry
10,000 BC
Directed by ROLAND EMMERICH
Certificate 12a
FAITHFUL followers of this column will know my views on CGI (computer generated images).
High-tech wizardry and filling the screen with an apparent army of half a million is very impressive. Until you look more closely.
Creating robots like Robocop’s gigantic adversary – now that’s something else, and great fun as a toy.
But we have enough trouble suspending our disbelief anyway without having to add this CGI burden of unreality to our shoulders.
I must have seen the 1936 classic Charge of the Light Brigade half a dozen times, directed by Michael Curtiz with Errol Flynn in full gallop at the head of the intrepid 600 as they charged the Turkish guns. I can still picture it now. These were real men on real horses, and when they crashed into the dust it brought me out in goose-bumps, and still does. Now that’s movie-making.
So it takes a lot to win me over – but 10,000BC pulls out all the stops, and succeeds. I’m hooked, and I admit it.
Seeing a stampede of 50 woolly mammoths does the trick, as the monsters with their huge tusks run riot in the snowy mountain wastes (actually New Zealand), bellowing with rage and hurling their antagonists on to jagged rocks.
Even a massive sabre-toothed lion looks the part in startling close-up.
This is where the film scores, and where I join the converted.
The story centres on a young hunter (Steven Strait) and his search for the love of his life (Camilla Belle, who could double for a young Elizabeth Taylor) after she is kidnapped by a one-eyed shaven-headed slave raider (Marco Khan).
It’s that kind of film: you have no trouble recognising the villains. The leading players speak concise English, though there’s more grunt and groan than Saturday night World Wrestling, as the tribes roam the plains, all looking much the same: matted hair and black beards.
But the action is spectacular, and the cast of unknowns deserves a round of applause for keeping a straight face. I know I didn’t. |
 |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
