The story follows the adventures of a Viking boy left behind and raised by native Indians. Pathfinder is aimed more at the action-figure crowd than the history buffs. Pathfinder, a fantasy about Vikings and Indians fighting in North America back around the first millennium, Nispel took part of its plot from an Oscar-nominated Norwegian film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which had more slicing (both editing and killing) and much more boredom than the original. His first feature was a kind of homage, the 2003 remake of Tobe Hooper's hoping to illustrate comics but ended up directing music videos (George Michael, Cher) instead. Growing up in the seventies and caught in the spell of American pop culture, he came to the U.S. German director Marcus Nispel certainly qualifies. Pathfinder, a movie about fanboys for fanboys. The term "fanboy," which arose in the early eighties among comic-book collectors, defines It's primitive and bloody and butch and all about the ride, as long as you don't mind getting lost along the way.ĭistributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.Starring Karl Urban, Russell Means and Moon Goodblood The design, the limited, primitive color palette and the breathless, primal violence make "Pathfinder" work about as well as any movie with this director and this cast and villains who speak Norwegian was going to work. That's why we came the vengeance thing.īecause Roger's rule here no movie set in the Dark Ages, or among pre-Columbian Native Americans, can be half bad a grim, fascinating and oh-so-foreign setting. The script is stuffed with Ancient Hollywood Native-speak, that stilted nonsense that puts the "noble" in Old School Hollywood "noble savages." And the movie's grasp of geography is as uncertain as its handle on North American meteorology.
He keeps this thing moving, which is helpful, seeing as how Urban and his love interest, the real tracker in this tribe (Moon Bloodgood), don't dazzle us with their screen presence. Video director-turned-filmmaker Marcus Nispel (George Michael's greatest video hits, and the 2003 "Texas Chainsaw Massacre") plays up the gore zeroing in on every head lopped, every arm lost and every eye removed by battle-ax or blade. The Norseman must lead the Vikings some other way, picking them off as he does. The aged Pathfinder (Russell Means of "Mohicans") must lead his people to the west to safety. He's got his old broadsword and he's out to make Spam out of these Vikings.Ī chase ensues. The Norwegian Indian must save those he can and give vent to his lifelong rage at bad parenting. The Vikings have WMD weapons of mass decapitation. The Indians have stone spears and wooden arrows. They will "cleanse this land before we settle here" character actor Clancy Brown growls through unrecognizable beard and helmet, and in subtitled Norwegian no less.
Darned if those old "Dragon" people (Norsemen) don't return for a bit of sin and slaughter. The boy is raised by the People of the Dawn, Native American Aquarians, they are simple happy natives living in Hollywood peace. These Vikings, great hairy beasts clad in leather, animal bones and chain mail, bring war horses with them to their Vineland. In a corner of northeastern America that looks more like the coast of Norway (Vancouver, actually), a boy is left behind in the wreckage of the biggest Viking longship ever. "Pathfinder" puts us in the moccasins of a man being hunted by the most ruthless killers in history. And Karl Urban ("Lord of the Rings"), who plays a Viking raised among Indians, would never pass muster with the buff Spartans of "300."īut it's kind of fun, a ride that while it isn't remotely as thrilling as "300" or as epic as its antecedents, "Mohicans" and "Conan" does transport us to an alien place and time. Remember "Conan the Barbarian," not Encyclopedia Brittanica. It's a B-picture with a stunning look and action beats to beat the band, a regular "Conan the Barbarian" meets "The Last of the Mohicans." Indians chase through the wilds of what is supposed to be North America circa the year 1000. Forget for just a moment that "Pathfinder" is a seriously silly and gloriously gory Hollywood remake of a lean, mean 1987 Norwegian film.Īccept it as a piece of movie-going red meat, an adventurous, bloody, Vikings vs.
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