Bob's Quick Look: Conan The Barbarian (2011)

Being a huge fan of the original books by Robert E. Howard, the Marvel comic book series, and the two movies released in the early 80s (the video game that came out a couples years ago kinda sucked,) I was pretty excited for a new Conan movie to finally hit the big screen. What I saw made me want to cry.
The story is very basic. During his education as a warrior, Conan’s village of Cimmeria is raided by tyrant and his army who are searching for the final piece of an evil magical mask that will enable the tyrant to rule the world. The keeper of the shard, Corin, Conan’s father,
played by Ron Perlman, is tortured and ultimately killed by the bad guy in front of his young son, who then dedicates his life to finding this tyrant and avenging his father’s death. That’s the story. There’s not much more to it than that.

Essentially what we see is a 3D swashbuckling splatter-fest. I feel the makers of this movie decided to sacrifice elements such as story, character development, and things like this, to fill the movie with as much action as possible. My disappointment stems from the fact that
there is so much source material to work with that would have made for a great movie, and it seems like the producers didn’t really care. They’re satisfied with selling tickets solely on the name. What’s even more frustrating is that the beginning of the movie was very well done. Ron Perlman gave an excellent performance (as usual) as Corin, and Leo Howard’s portrayal of the young Conan was awesome. The writers did a spot on job showing the relationship between Conan and his father as they make a sword together and how Corin teaches his son to fight. But once Conan is an adult, these more detailed elements completely disappear. The rest of the performances were “ok” at best. Jason Mamoa was an alright Conan and Stephen Lang was at least bearable as the tyrant, Khalar Zyn. I’ve never been shy about the fact that I’m not a fan of Rose Mcgowan as an actress, and in this movie in her performance as Zyn’s witch-daughter could only be described as “corny.”
All in all, this movie had a lot of potential that was otherwise ignored for the sake of maximum 3D action, and this film is a good example of what happens when a movie’s producers are more interested in using visual f/x than in making a good story driven movie - kind of like The Phantom Menace.