Conan The Barbarian (2011) [Blu-ray]
Action | Adventure | Fantasy

Tagline: Born on the battlefield.

A quest that begins as a personal vendetta for the fierce Cimmerian warrior soon turns into an epic battle against hulking rivals, horrific monsters, and impossible odds, as Conan realizes he is the only hope of saving the great nations of Hyboria from an encroaching reign of supernatural evil.

Warning! This synopsis may contain spoilers: During the Hyborean Age, a group of sorcerers from Acheron created a mask from the skulls of dead kings and sacrificed their pure blood daughters to the dark gods in order to give the mask the power to subjugate the entire world. After killing countless people in their campaign to conquer the planet, the sorcerers were defeated by the Cimmerians led by Corin (Ron Perlman), who destroys the mask, scattering the pieces across the land, and keeping one for himself.

Years later, the Cimmerians are at war with a rival clan. Corin's pregnant wife is fatally injured in the battle, but is able to give birth to a son, Conan, before succumbing to her injuries. Conan's birth on a battlefield, and subsequent survival, is considered to be a powerful omen.

As an adolescent, Conan (Leo Howard) becomes a fierce, but unfocused, warrior. Corin takes the boy to his foundry and teaches him the Riddle of Steel. Conan insists that he is ready to wield his own sword, but Corin reminds him that once a blade has been forged, it must still be tempered before it can be wielded. Not long after, village are attacked by armored warriors, sporting a symbol of a large, two headed serpent. The leader, Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang), confronts Corin, demanding his piece of the Mask. When Corin refuses, he is restrained and tortured. Conan, in an angry moment of defiance, attacks one of the warriors, Lucius (Steven O'Donnell), maiming him in the process. After recovering the piece of the mask, Zym has Conan and Corin chained to a pole, a cauldron of molten metal hanging precariously above them, then sets fire to the foundry. Corin sacrifices himself to enable Conan to escape.

Twenty years later, Conan (Jason Momoa) is a mercenary, working with a Zamoran pirate named Artus (Nonso Anozie). The two men raid a slave camp and take the survivors to the city of Messianta. The snake cult has grown in size over the last decade, and they have a small garrison in the city. Conan sees Lucius, now an out of shape warden, pursuing a pickpocket, Ela-Shan (Saïd Taghmaoui), and allows himself to be arrested in a bid to learn more about his enemy. Conan soon escapes prison and tortures Lucius for information about Zym and the snake cult. After Conan promises to spare him, Lucius reveals that Zym is seeking the pure blood descendant of the sorcerers of Acheron, as it will take their blood to unlock the Mask's true power. Satisfied that he has gotten all he can out of Lucius, Conan leaves him at the mercy of the liberated prisoners. Ela-Shan tells Conan that, if he ever needs him, Conan will find him at Arlagon, the City of Thieves.

Meanwhile, Zym and his daughter, Marique (Rose McGowan), attack a monastery where they believe the Pureblood is. Sensing something is wrong, the elder priest Fassir (Raad Rawi) instructs one of his students, Tamara (Rachel Nichols), to flee to her birthplace, then confronts Zym to buy time for her to escape. Zym recounts how his wife, Maliva, was murdered by Fassir's order. Fassir defends this decision, insisting that Maliva was an insane fanatic who was attempting to unleash occult forces to destroy Hyborea. Enraged by Fassir's defiance, Zym kills him with a curb stomp. Marique realizes that the Pureblood is not among them.

Tamara's carriage comes under attack by snake cult warriors. Conan comes to her rescue, after a spirited chase, eventually captures their captain, Remo (Milton Welsh). After forcing Remo to reveal Tamara's importance, Conan kills him by catapulting him into Zym's camp.

Armed with the knowledge of Tamara's importance, and confident that Zym will not recognize him, Conan masquerades as a bounty hunter, claiming to sell Tamara to Zym for a substantial sum of gold. Once he is satisfied that Zym and Marique have come alone, Conan reveals his true intentions, prompting him to cross swords. Conan and Zym first seem to be nearly evenly matched, but Conan's rage gives him the upper hand. Marique saves her father by invoking soldiers made of sand and then poisoning Conan with a poison-laced boomerang sword. Tamara rescues him and they return to Artus' boat, stationed nearby, where Artus helps Conan recover.The boat is attacked by the snake cult, who kill several of the crew, though are ultimately repulsed. Conan orders Artus to return to Messiana with Tamara and departs to confront Zym in his kingdom. Artus tells Tamara that Conan left a map behind and she follows him, meeting with him in a cave, where they make love. The next day, as she's returning to the boat to join Artus so they can sail away, she's captured by snake cult.

Remembering Ela-Shan's earlier promise, Conan travels to Argalon and hires Shan to help him sneak into Zym's fortress. They discover that beneath the fortress is an old mine, and this is where Zym and Marique plan to sacrifice Tamara, Conan enters through an undersea cave, where he fights a giant multi-tendriled serpent. Proceeding further down the mine, Conan disrupts the sacrifice and frees Tamara, but Zym has collected enough of Tamara's blood to restore the Mask to suboptimal strength. Zym dons the mask, claiming to be invincible, and proceeds to fight Conan again. The battle inadvertantly triggers an earthquake, killing most of Zym's followers and rendering the mine unstable. Conan frees Tamara and tells her to run. However, she is followed by Marique. Conan hears Tamara's screams, and kills Marique by throwing her down a mine shaft. As the mine continues to crumble, Conan and Tamara attempt to find an alternate way way out, with an enraged Zym in hot pursuit. Conan and Tamara eventually make their way to an unstable rope bridge, precariously above a massive canyon. As they cross the bridge, a support beam under Tamara gives way, causing her to nearly fall. As Conan attempts to save her before the bridge gives way, they are cornered by Zym, who uses the Mask's power to summon Maliva's spirit. In an act of defiance, Conan proceeds to destroy the bridge supports with his sword, before jumping to safety with Tamara. The bridge collapses, and Zym falls to his death.

With the snake cult destroyed, Conan returns Tamara to her birthplace, telling her that they'll meet again. He then returns to his old village and tells his father that he has avenged his death and recovered the sword Zym stole from him, before departing in search of new pursuits.

User Comment: wordmonkey from San Francisco, Ca., 18 August 2011 • Director Marcus Nispel is undoubtedly the long-lost offspring of trash master and fellow German, Uwe Boll, as this film is so profoundly awful on every level that it's hard to think that it wasn't intentionally made this way.

Remarkably, the movie gets bad immediately and stays that way. One of its most jarring aspects is that it begins with Morgan Freeman's narration, which sounds so utterly out of place, with his comforting, slightly Southern drawl the total opposite of everything bloody and Cimmerian, that it instantly comes across like self-parody, as if we were seeing some schticky Mel Brooks interpretation after the fact. This ham-handed disregard for appropriate tone haunts every frame of the film.

The story fails to find the real Conan -- who in Robert E. Howard's stories is a smart, tough, brutal survivor -- and instead seems to reveal to us the underwhelming idea that Conan's just another hunky sword dude with a knack for slaughter.

The script inconsistently sticks to any epic poetic flair in the dialog, so that when such words are delivered, they feel forced and flat. The noted line "I live, I love, I slay, and I am content," is meted out with such lack of panache or feeling that I wanted to wash out Jason Momoa's mouth with soap, right after forcing him to watch Schwarzenegger -- not a great actor, by any means -- deliver the unforgettable tagline: "To crush your enemies, drive them before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women." But then again, John Milius bothered to direct his actors.

Stephen Lang (Colonel Quaritch of "Avatar") is the half-assed villain Khalar Zym, who inspires zero awe and no respect on his whatever quest for some supernatural thingy, which is such an afterthought that you constantly forget about it. And post plastic-surgery Rose McGowan as his witchy daughter Marique is so outrageously goth that you half-wish for a Sisters of Mercy musical cue every time she steps on camera; if only her performance received the same attention as her over-the-top costumes. Ron Perlman, as Conan's father, is simply wasted. Weep!

I'm totally sick of the short-attention-span style of storytelling. The filmmakers are so afraid that if some big action sequence doesn't occur every ten minutes, that we'll be bored; and of course, this quickly has the opposite effect, as we instead become bored from so much pointless, poorly shot and edited action unsupported by character or story. Video games often have more character development than this film, and yes, I'm specifically thinking of the comparatively Shakespearean struggles portrayed in Donkey Kong.

I bestowed two stars on this flick, as the second is for unintentional hilarity, of which the film has much. Its hyperbolic Hyborian cartoonishness makes you either wince or chuckle derisively. Hopefully, as many heads as roll on screen will also roll in Hollywood for this abortive, dreadful garbage.

Perhaps the noble Conan will someday get his proper due in a modern film. But not today.

Summary: The Terrible Wrath of Darkest Gods.

[CSW] -2- I never developed any real caring for any of the characters except Conan's farther. See the user comment above as it pretty well sums up what went wrong with this movie. With exception to his comment about Morgan Freeman's narration sounding out of place, it did not sound out of place to me, the rest pretty well sums up what I thought of this movie. The action and cinematography could not make up for any of the rest of the flaws but at least account for why I didn't hate this movie. I rented this to see why I didn't want to get the 3D version which turned out to be one of my better moves, I didn't get it.
[V5.0-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box - Although there were supposedly motion codes loaded for this title D-Box never found them resulting in the No D-Box rating.

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