When a film begins with a caesarean performed on the battlefield, with a rusty dagger, you have two choices: leave, or strap in and revel in the gore. Those who choose the latter will be rewarded tenfold by Conan The Barbarian's endless geysers of blood.
Because if there's one thing you need to know about this reboot, it's that human beings in Cimmeria are full of the stuff; with the slightest prick they explode into great fountains of gore, as though their innards consist solely of blood. They're like fur-wearing Ribena Berries!
Indeed, the hysterical level of operatic violence dished out in Conan is, oddly enough, one of its charms.
Harking back to the bad old days of hack-chop action romps starring good-natured dunderheads like "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and, yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger, this Conan is a big, messy stew of gore, hilarious dialogue (some intentionally so), boobs, innovative use of fur fashions, and nonsense mythology.
Is it good? Not particularly - but in its own deranged way, Conan is sort of exhilarating. It fun to take holiday from brain sometime.
The film opens with a handy 101 guide to Hyboria, narrated by Morgan Freeman, that involves a bunch of magical mumbo-jumbo and an exploding castle. A brief moment of respite comes as we see baby Conan at peace in his mother's womb... before a dagger plunges through the wall of her uterus and it's on for young and old.
Yes, in the middle of a war, dad Corin (Ron Perlman, wearing a squashed sheep) slices his son from his dying wife's belly, raising the child above his head Lion King-style. "Born of battle", as it were.
The child quickly grows into a boy (Disney tween and black belt Leo Howard), who proves himself ready for battle when he single-handedly dispatches a bunch of marauding oiks, strolling casually back into town with a handful of heads. That goes down great with dadser, but less well with the local warlord Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang), who soon turns up and torches the joint while looking for the final piece of a magical crown that will give him ultimate power.
Despite young Conan's efforts (including giving one of Zym's offsiders a nifty battlefield rhinoplasty), Zym razes the town and takes off with the crown fragment, leaving the boy to swear vengeance over his father's barbequed remains.
Blink, and Conan has once again grown, this time into Jason Momoa, and he spends his time looking hunky and picking off local ne'er-do-wells as he searches Hyboria for his nemesis.
Meanwhile, in a temple straight out of my Boris Vallejo & Julie Bell calendar, the wizened Fassir (Raad Rawi) tells his charges - female monks - of a prophesy: a warrior's path will merge with that of Tamara (Rachel Nichols).
Unfortunately for Fassir, Zym and his followers - including his wicked daughter Marique, now grown into surefire Razzie victor Rose McGowan - have also heard about this mountainside monk YWCA, and turn up with a big ship (?) carried by a brace of elephants (??).
Before long it becomes clear that Fassir will not play by Zym's rules, so they ditch diplomacy and start spilling blood and smashing faces on the temple steps. Marique does some particularly nasty work on some of the monks with her Small House Of Uncle Thomas fingernails.
Soon enough it all starts churning towards its inevitable showdown, at which point you may be surprised to find yourself whooping with laughter every time someone's head is smashed open. (You'll certainly laugh all the way through the sex scene, quite literally a roll in the hay.)
The handsome if slightly blank Momoa is sturdy as Conan, offering occasional flashes of lightness that make his hurr durr dialogue - including the legendary "I live, I love, I slay, and I am content" - bearable. His scenes with the sparky Nichols are quite charming ("Go to sleep", he commands her as she chats away). Perlman does his best with the few brief scenes he is given.
Everyone else is fair to terrible: Lang faxes in some leftovers from his most recent bad-dude turn in Avatar, while McGowan does a great impression of a boiled egg possessed by the spirit of Wendy O Williams. (The supporting cast looks like someone set off an ugly bomb at a body-modification expo.) Special effects are pretty good - a battle scene involving zombies made of sand is particularly nifty - but there's no reason to see the 3D version (I saw 2D), which is reportedly murky and pointless.
The art design is strictly panel-van fantasy art and the costumes are silly, and yet despite all this - and the hair-raising volume of blood spilled, sprayed and splodged - I came away from Conan The Barbarian feeling strangely buoyed.
As a round-about ode to the mega-violent action flicks of yesteryear, or simply as a trade video for Kryolan's various theatrical blood products, this cinematic protein shake does precisely what it sets out to do: it's violent, it's dumb, it's fun, and it is content.
- three stars
Source: The Vine
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