Conan the Barbarian is a simple, lump of a man. And
consequently Conan the Barbarian is a
simple, lump of a movie. If you go into it expecting something else, then
you’re bound to come out of it seething with rage. But if you go into it
expecting, nay, looking forward to what it is, then you just might walk out
with a big grin on your face. Watching something as brutal and dumb as Conan the Barbarian is pure escapism. It
taps into that same primitive part of the brain that leads to dudes punching
each other in the arm when they go out drinking or football players coming up
with elaborate celebratory dances after they score touchdowns. The animal pleasure
that can be derived from watching Conan isn’t
something that I try to experience a lot, but for most guys it’s something of
an occasional necessity. And probably the awesomest of girls know what I’m
talking about as well.
Conan the Barbarian is
about a big, muscle bound guy bedding buxom wenches and flaying his enemies with
a giant broadsword, so I won’t get too much into recapping the plot. It’s a
simple story anyways. There is a magical mask that makes its wearer super
powerful. Long ago the Barbarian tribes defeated the mask’s wearer, broke it up
into pieces, and distributed them amongst themselves. Flash forward a bit and a
boy is who prophesied to be the ultimate badass named Conan (Jason Momoa) is
born. His sword-forging father Corin (Ron Perlman) is the keeper of the last
piece of the mask that hasn’t been claimed by a psychotic bad guy with plans of
world domination named Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang). Early on in the film a young
Conan watches as Zym kills his father, claims the last piece of the mask, and
burns his entire village to the ground. For Conan, the rest of this journey
will be about killing Zym and getting his revenge. For Zym, his immediate goal
is to harvest the blood of some noble born chick (Rachel Nichols), which will
restart the magic voodoo of his mask and allow him to resurrect his powerful
witch wife. With that, we’re off to the races.
The best thing about Conan
is that the plot is simple, doesn’t require much explanation, and is able
to get out of the way while the film keeps up a hurried pace and crams as much
action as it can into its 112 minute runtime. From the opening scene where
Conan gets cut out of his dying mother’s belly in the middle of a battlefield,
to the climactic showdown in a place called Skull Cave, Conan delivers non-stop action that never gives you a chance to
stop, think about what you’re watching, and get disgusted or bored. In addition
to the constant, brutal mutilations, we get a big carriage chase sequence, a
take over of a ship pirate movie style, a fight with sand warriors that looks
like something out of The Mummy, and
a fight with an underwater, tentacled beast that resembles a trash compactor
sequence in a certain, seminal space adventure. And it’s all presented with a
decent example of post conversion 3D. I wouldn’t say that the 3D is essential,
but at least it’s used to make the arrow flinging, spear chucking action
sequences more thrilling instead of getting tacked on for no reason at all. And
I think I’ve decided that the best use of 3D is to make scenes where people are
perilously dangling over super high precipices more harrowing. It worked for
the flying scenes in Up and Avatar, and it works during a climactic
battle here.
The performances are about what you would expect out of a Conan the Barbarian movie; meaning
they’re not great. I liked Jason Momoa a lot as the mostly silent brute Khal
Drogo in HBO’s Game of Thrones, but
when asked to deliver even slightly more dialogue than that here his weaknesses
as a performer begin to show. What he does have going for him is that he’s a
big presence on the screen, and given the right roles that could take him far.
Look at what happened to Schwarzenegger; he never became much of an actor, but
he made a huge career out of over the top presence and charisma alone. For
Conan, Momoa is fine. The character doesn’t have to come across as eloquent or
a deep thinker, he just has to be believable ripping the shirt off of a wench
or ripping the head off of a dude. Momoa has that in spades.
Some of the supporting work isn’t so acceptable though. I
liked Stephen Lang okay as Khalar Zym, but he doesn’t do much other than
grimace and act like a jerk. He looked the part well and he got you to dislike
his character by the end of the movie, but I would have liked to have seen more
of that scenery chewing, ridiculously evil action acting that he brought to his
ludicrous character in Avatar. This
is Conan for the love of Pete, no
reason to take things seriously. Perlman only gets a small amount of screen
time, but I found him to be completely acceptable as Conan’s dad. Perlman is a
rock of a character actor at this point, and when you cast him you pretty much
know exactly what you’re getting. Plus, if there were a real life Conan the
Barbarian, Perlman would probably actually be his dad anyway, so this was kind
of a no brainer. The ladies who get speaking roles did less to impress. Rachel
Nichols is absolutely atrocious as Tamara, the pure of blood girl who Zym wants
to sacrifice and Conan falls into a romance with. The character is written as
having spunk and being more than a match for Conan due to her feistiness and
sharp tongue, but Nichols is such a wet noodle that she doesn’t pull any of the
banter off.
Forget fighting alongside or building an interesting romance
with Conan, Nichols was so without personality that I wouldn’t have bought her
doing anything other than cowering into a fetal ball and getting carried around
by the Barbarian like a briefcase for the whole movie. Rose McGowan plays Zym’s
witch daughter Marique, and while she certainly looked freaky enough, every
time she opened her mouth and said something I stopped taking her seriously.
She was using some sort of made up accent that made her sound like a dork more
than anything else, and I have no idea what she was going for.
So Conan has a lot
of things wrong with it. The dialogue is pretty miserable, the acting is very
spotty, the romance is laughable, and the MacGuffin of the magic mask never got
explained or showed off enough for me to take it seriously. But it also does
enough right that I can’t call it a failure. If you like to take in a stupid
action movie every once in a while, then this is one of those that remains
watchable despite serious flaws. The sheer number of horses that get knocked
out with maces or slashed with broadswords during battle is a pretty good
indication that what you’re watching is awesome alone. Plus the movie moves
along at a brisk pace, every action scene is absolutely bathed in blood, and
every scene of revelry is rife with carefully cast bare bosoms. Really, it’s
got everything you need. Including a scene where Conan sticks a finger into the
gaping bloody hole left where a man’s nose used to be, instantly making the man
shriek in agony and wet himself, and instantly making me do the same. A little.
