| Mongol Review |
| Written by Baselrd |
| Friday, 05 September 2008 17:09 |
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Score: B+ Genre: Drama/ Biography/ War The dramatized narrative of the life of Genghis Khan is quite entertaining but feels like it misrepresented just how powerful the great king was. Mongol is a movie whose theme is the story of one man: Genghis Khan. Namely, the the events of the Khan’s life that preceded his unification of Mongolian tribes and rule over half of the world.
After watching Mongol, I had a feeling of satisfaction that I had just watched a very good movie. For starters, one would imagine that a movie about the Great Khan would be a classical war movie where blood will spill and swords would swing. Well, that happened, but not to the extent that I imagined. War was not the focus of the movie, but rather the Khan himself. Despite the fact that there weren’t many war scenes, some of the most important battles in the life of Genghis Khan were shown. Sergei Bodrov (the director) does a great job presenting those battles, and doesn’t commit the mistake of showing too many battles for viewers to lose interest (remember Troy and 300).
The movie very well-done that at some points I felt that I was thinking of it as a documentary, not a movie. The character development was marvelous, as the movie showed how Genghis Khan the child is obliged to become a man. It shows his suffering; a little bit of a love story, where the Khan would do anything to have his wife to his side.
As much as I liked the movie, however, there was also a sense that there was something wrong. It struck me first when I saw Genghis Khan himself. He was a gentleman who was very family-oriented. He loved his wife and listened to her opinion. In battle, the movie also shows him as an honorable fighter who doesn’t kill children. After watching a documentary about the Great Khan, I realized that I wasn’t wrong in my dissatisfaction. The real Khan was a barbarian who killed his brother when they were both kids, he was a womanizer (which was normal for a fighter of his caliber in that era), and he wanted to rule the world. The movie tried to make the audience feel for the Khan and how hard he worked until he became a king, which clouded to an extent the original image of him as a strong king. Which takes me to the other little glitch with the movie; it doesn’t show how exactly the Khan became the Khan. The movie focuses on the events that led to his becoming king, not so much how he convinced and gathered a huge army of people to follow him to achieve this feat.
Final word: This movie is a great presentation of the life of Genghis Khan, with convincing scenes that and very good actors, and it only falls short of being a great movie due to a big gap in the story-line and the attempt of making a fan favorite out of the famous Mongolian king by twisting reality. |
