Conan the Barbarian is a movie of contrivance and convenience. I went into the film with low expectations and lower hopes and somehow still managed to be dissatisfied.
Conan (Jason Mamoa) is basically your average slaughtering hero. He's tall, muscular and sports a rather camera-friendly scars. He is a "battle-born" (meaning his father performed an emergency Caesarean section on the battlefield) Cimmerian whose entire village was slaughtered, including his father (Ron Perlman), by a power-hungry warlord named Khaler Zym (Stephen Lang) and his daughter (Rose McGowan). Conan grows up and becomes a pirate that hunts the earth for Zym. Basically you don't really need to know anything else. Conan goes somewhere, kills a bunch of people, puts his sword in the ground and does it all over again.
The majority of the film is horribly incoherent. Characters are in one place and then suddenly they appear in another with no explanation of how they got there or managed to escape their earlier predicament. All the moments between the action scenes seem to be nothing more than filler before the next battle. While I'm at it, the battles are boring and ridiculous. When a character cuts through that thick leather armor a hundred and twenty eight ounces of blood plop out all at once no matter where the victims are cut. Well, every victim except Conan. . Oh and before I forget, I really want to be a warlord. They apparently get a really good dental plan.
One of the more out-of-place roles is Morgan Freeman as the narrator. His voice, while pleasant, just doesn't fit. It's the first thing you hear in the film and immediately takes you out of the film thereby forcing you to be uninvolved by everything that follows. The only saving grace for the movie is Ron Perlman but he's always interesting to watch.
Broadswords go a long way with me. Just not far enough.
★
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