Pathfinder

The action in Pathfinder is so chaotic that you don’t know what’s happening, and you’ll only find out who killed whom when you see who leaves the fight alive. That this happened in the age of poetic and easy-to-follow fights à la 300 makes this failing inexcusable, especially in a movie based on action. And telling a story and guiding the characters are also beyond Marcus Nispel’s power. One must ask what is in this filmmaker’s power. In this case, just covering the screen with emotionally flat darkness. Pathfinder is a terrible film based on a script with the intelligence level of the worst video-game adaptations. Moreover, it is completely butchered by the final random scenes, reminiscent of Ed Wood’s filmmaking methods (long shots of an avalanche, taken from God knows where). After some hesitation, I’m awarding this one star. It has no place in cinemas. (06/17/2007)

The positives end with the subject matter, which is quite decent (but incidentally stolen from the literary classic J. F. Cooper). The rest is a mix of retarded cluelessness of both the screenwriter (half a page of the main axis, about 10 lines for the main character’s dialogue, and a handful of terrible dialogues) and the director, who should have it explained to him that there is no darkness like darkness and that the de-colored filter, together with the chaotic editing and the constantly thundering music are not particularly in fashion. Pathfinder lacks charisma (Karl Urban is bored instead of being a tough guy), insight (there really is a lot of marble here), and most of all balls. The opening credits and the atmospheric prologue, which is relatively well handled, are perhaps the most interesting parts of this whole charade. This is probably the worst high-budget blockbuster currently available. (07/05/2007)

Norwegians, like a bunch of hobnailed predators, hippie Indians, and Karl Urban, half-naked, rides under majestic mountain peaks. Only old Homolka with a two-handed ax, praising the panoramas, is missing. Nispel is a loser who can scare you in all manner of ways, especially through his complete amateurism. Unwatchable bullshit. (06/17/2009)

Rough fantasy fairy tale that partially reminded me of Barbara Conan. It has about as much in common with the historical reality of the Vikings as I do as an atheist with the function of a Roman Catholic cardinal. Within the genre, it is clearly below average in terms of both screenplay and direction. The costumes are perhaps worth mentioning... Overall impression 25%. (06/21/2007)

A bored Karl Urban in his least charismatic role to day, an interesting premise that is wasted, brutally heavy-handed fights (all of them in slow-motion!), awful-looking CGI blood in every other shot, a stupidly simple mythology and message, a plot that is not really worth talking about. In short, a brilliant example of a butchered high-budget and grandstanding project that has the soul of a hundred-year-old corpse. (02/17/2008)

Pathfinder is roughly halfway between Emmerich's 10,000 BC misery and Gibson's Apocalypto pageantry. The thing that definitely imprints the film on the mind is its brutality. No blood or dirt is spared, heads and limbs fly through the air and the whole film is actually one big battle from start to finish. But that's also its problem - killing Vikings (and being killed by Vikings) gets boring after an hour, so there's nothing to do but wait to see what else the filmmakers come up with. They come up with about a quarter of an hour of a boring passage with a frozen lake crossing (and make the Vikings look like major league morons), followed by a scramble over rocks and a final battle on the ropes. I thanked the filmmakers for it - it was quite imaginative and (maybe thanks to the ropes, hehe) it caught my attention. All in all (thanks to the nice visuals) I give it three stars.__P.S. The scene in the snow (the protagonist drives away on a shield, followed by Vikings on an Indian sled) was too much, I admit. (07/23/2010)