The 13th Warrior

I have to admit that in my day the film got to me, because I was just enjoying Viking black metal a lot, and just saying the name Odin or Valhalla made me emotional. With hindsight, I see mainly a film with a very interesting theme, but it has been completely buried by the illogical editing. Let the author of the original do it and it's a mess that he may understand, but the viewer can’t make sense of it. A little more and The 13th Warrior could have been a great adventure film from an exotic setting. This leaves a blurry mess with a good Banderas and some nice sequences. But as a whole, indescribably loose... Mr. Crichton, hold on to your pen!!! (01/31/2004)

I may have watched the 13th Warrior too soon. Otherwise, I would have missed my most important banter motif of dragging knights across the floor, which would have been a huge shame for my parents. Jerry Goldsmith managed to successfully knock out all the Zimmers, Williamses and even the reigning Howard Shore with The Lord of the Rings. The film itself ended up several leagues worse, though, but even after all these years I don't have the feeling of downright frustration when watching it. Rather, it's just the shockingly untapped potential that, under different circumstances, could have led to the most epic Viking romp ever created. (12/19/2022)

I can’t help it. Banderas is great in the role, the action scenes are good, suspenseful and imaginative, Goldsmith's music is gorgeous. The 13th Warrior scared and entertained me as a kid and it still does today. Above-par. (12/26/2009)

Antonio Banderas is cut out for the role of a medieval hero, Jerry Goldsmith’s music is fantastically monumental and the individual (mainly action) scenes are also very nicely filmed and sometimes chilling with their dynamics and dark atmosphere. The scene in the caverns is flawless. But all of those nicely filmed moments are oddly patched together into a sprawling and inconsistent whole that is disconcerting. Supposedly, this is the fault of Michael Crichton, whose contract allowed him to interfere with the final form of the film. An angry John McTiernan therefore dropped out of the project before it was finished. The result is thus not McTiernan’s, but Crichton’s. And frankly, it’s not worth much. And that’s a shame, because this could have been a first-rate adventure. (04/12/2002)