The movie opens with Morgan Freeman narrating, and when it shows how Conan was more or less born, this is so ridicilously unintentionally funny that it really gives the viewer a very bad 1st impression, when we see Young Conan prove his worth at the very next scene, i still can't get my mind off the very opening of the movie. Ron Perlman plays as Corim, the father of Conan who trains him and pretty much teaches him the riddle of steel, awesome. Granted the way Ron was doing the forging was, well really bad, i guess noone knew how proper blacksmithing is done during the set, because Perlman sure didn't.
The movie seems to kinda suffer finding it's roots and what kind of an film it truly is, is this an hardcore brutal R-rated revenge movie about a Barbarian getting his desires or is it an epic adventure film where the whole world is at stake as the ancient evil forces are about to return and a skilled warrior is needed to stop this ancient evil from rising and taking over the world. Really the first two acts of the movie are good, this movie has a epic set up (it's Hyboria for pete's sake!) but it just gets too mussed together at the end as they felt they absolutley had to connect Conan's story with Tamara's.
Conan the Barbarian (Jason Momoa) is an adventurer with Artus the Pirate (Nonso Anzonie) as his companion and thru the film Conan gains new friends such as Tamara (Rachel Nichols), she fills the role of damsel in distress in the 3rd act too sadly and you got Ela-Shan (Saïd Taghmaoui) the most succesful thief when it comes to unlocking any lock there is, why is this? Is it because he's the most talented mastes of unlocking? Is he a wizard or something more than the eye can see? Nah, actually he has this key-ring collection of multiple keys, so the question remains: Why doesn't he just make copies of this key ring and give it to Conan? <_> Yes, there is some unlocking needed and the guy claims he is a coward, so thats why i'm pondering about this.
The villains in the movie are Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang) and his daughter Marique (Rose McGowan) and i really liked how Rose was acting in this film, granted her character's dialogue is incredibly poorly done, but what i liked about her performance is that she's this weirdly looking yet also cute warrior princess who is so sadistic. She felt like Harley Quinn with no morals and no cute cover up, she was just a nasty piece of work. What however fails with her is that all her major dialogue was pretty much exposition, she either explained something that happened in the past, just recently happened, what the villains are planning to do and how. Thats her role in the movie more or less. Stephen Lang seemed to have a good time, but it's nothing too special, he comes off as your badass warrior general, but he doesn't have any memorable scenes.
The action scenes on the battlefield are incredibly well done, the coreography really works there. It really sets you to the mood of the battlefield. Really all the action scenes that happen outdoors we're really visually pleasing, but when it came to inside building fights sucha s the Castle or the final dungeon, it had some really weird quick editing where you had no idea what was really happening. It also has one action scene that serves absolutely no point to the plot, this is the Conan vs. Kraken monster you guys see in the trailer, it adds absolutely nothing to the movie and feels like a video game boss that Conan had to defeat to gain acces to the next stage.
The soundtrack in this movie isn't anything special or memorable, i will remember 2 songs, because both of them had that chorus type singing to give it an "epic" feeling, one was more adventure themed and the other one was like those ancient evil hymmings when you summon Cthulu or something.
Now the best part about this movie is easily Jason Momoa's acting, my god does he sell the role. Infact i didn't even see him as Jason or Khal Drogo from Game of Thrones, this was Conan the Barbarian. The smirks, his love for good fights and tavern nights with his friends, the cynical and absolutely brutal acts he does to his enemies and those that he hunts, his battle skills, his movements and him dual wielding two broad swords, oh yes. <3
Ultimately the movie accomplishes showing Jason Momoa's talent as an actor, this is his 2nd role as a Barbarian Warlord as he had a similiar role in Season 1 of Game of Thrones as Khal Drogo, the 2nd accomplishment the movie has is destroying the Phantom's headquarters and finally putting that pulp hero to permament retirement, so we don't have to fear for the return of Billy Zane. The movie didn't hit the box office in USA, but hopefully during this weekend it has a good opening in Europe so it can pull off the Expendables where 62% of the profit comes from international market, because there definately should be a potential for more R-rated fantasy movies, thats what i atleast prefer to think.
