If I had to list out all of my picks for Hollywood reboots I have no idea how far down Conan the Barbarian would be. Let’s just say, it would be really far down. But someone wanted to give it a shot, so here we are. The movie stars Jason Momoa as the titular character, who is on a life long journey to track down the men who destroyed his village and killed his father (Ron Perlman). The clichéd storyline is only overshadowed by the awful dialogue, or lack thereof in many cases.
Momoa’s performance, mainly his speaking parts, would fit better in a WWE wrestling ring than a big budget movie, and even there it would be tough to believe. The guy is jacked and obviously capable of handling large-scale fight scenes filled with complicated choreography, but he reads his lines like a kindergarten production of Clash of the Titans. Stephen Lang who plays the bad guy in a slight sidestep from the military madman he seems to play in everything else (Avatar), is fairly adequate. He seesaws between accents, but the audience grows to hate him so he does his job.
The unbelievable number of fight scenes smothers any chance for the film to have a positive result. Some of them are impressive and compelling, but the constant brawling really takes the urgency out of the picture and the movie can be described as one brutal stabbing after another. Fights with people made of sand and an acrobatic slugfest over a bottomless ravine are the only two that stand out.
As far as franchise potential goes, Conan the Barbarian has virtually none. The R rating allows for messier deaths and randomly placed, bare-chested women, but it does nothing to help the movie. A PG-13 take with more personality might have actually brought some people to the theater. I understand that Barbarians aren’t exactly perceived as happy-go-lucky, but who wants to watch a movie about a murderous brute that can hardly string two sentences together? Not me, I don’t watch Meryl Streep movies. (5.7 out of 10)
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