March 3rd, 2008

 

Movie Review

 

 

 

 

 

 Title            10.000 BC

 Director        Roland Emmerich

 Studio          Warner Bross

 Starring        Steven Strait

                   Camilla Belle

                   Cliff Curtis

 Released       March, 7 (US)

 Duration        109 min

 Language      English

 

 

Review

I was heading to the cinema, hoping to see the pre-historic setting movie which at least as good as "300". But "bigger number" is not really related with the better quality I guess. I was kind of little disappointed with the movie. Or perhaps I was just expecting too much.

As I know, Roland Emmerich is the director of big-hit movies, namely Independence Day, Godzilla, or The Day After Tomorrow. That makes this movies into an account. But 10.000 BC surprisingly turned out into simple, robotic, and predictable.

The movie was taken in several locations, such as New Zealand, South Africa, and Namibia. This movie is trying to present the variety of locations, from scorching red desert into frozen iced-mountains. Some animals presented in this movie are familiar: mammoth, saber-tooth tiger, and birds -only they are in giant size and having unique relations with human. Human killed mammoth, tiger became friends with human, and birds eats human. I know it sounded crazy, but maybe you need to travel to the past to prove that it really happened....

Some aspects in this movie were just sort of gimmick. They came and gone without giving deep impression to the audience, for example: the scene with the tiger seems passing by. I could not see the significance of presenting a saber-tooth tiger in the story.  It seemed that the film maker was too focusing on how to finish the story, making the plot make sense, rather letting the scene "sit, stay, and interact" with the audience.

When it came into the last minutes of the movie, again I was dissatisfied since the ending seemed too short, despite the message delivered by the film maker that "sometime we have to believe in ourselves and do not let the superior people from stopping you". The God, described as the biggest enemy, was killed pretty easily. It was easier to kill him than a mammoth. I enjoyed seeing D'Lay (Steven Strait) killed mammoth instead. We had to wait for 100 minutes to see The God in the end could not help himself to hinder the spear thrown from hundred meters? I think he earned the better way to die.

Critics have seen the film negatively. The review aggregator at Rotten Tomatoes has reported that only 8% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 75 reviews. Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 37 out of 100, based on 75 reviews

However, this movie still teaches us some aspects of humanity sides. Namely: togetherness, family-hood, sacrifice, courage, integrity, caring, and so on. Since there was almost no explicit graphics or materials, I think this movie is also suitable for young teenagers.

 

See the trailer below:

 

 

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