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10,000 BC
R4 - Australia - Warner Home Video Review written by and copyright: Stevie McCleary & Noor Razzak (22nd October 2008). |
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The Film
 Blimey, where to begin? "10,000 B.C.", which is an apt title as it certainly felt like ten thousand years were passing me by, is one of those films that simply don’t work. It sure looks like the type of film you’d like to whittle away two hours of your life on, because it actively reminds you of other films that were similar to it. Sadly, it takes itself far too seriously and takes too long at everything else it tries to do, to even come close to any form of preconceived entertainment. Those two hours weren’t merely whittled away but drilled out of me like an infected molar…and by the way, the dentist forgot his anaesthetic. "10,000 B.C." is 104 minutes of your life that feels like 10,000 years and every second of that is time you will never get back to spend with your friends or family. I wish this film was interesting. It is taking all my willpower to even explain the plot due to how bland and utterly un-engaging it is. But here we go; D’leh (which is ‘Held’ backwards, and if memory serves is German for ‘hero’) is your protagonist. He sure does suck at fighting. He lives in an icy wasteland with the rest of his tribe and a blue eyed girl named Evolet (Camilla Belle) who turned up one day from a tribe that got slaughtered. Naturally, D’leh (Steven Strait) and Evolet fall for each other. This is their love story, and as it is a story that portrays itself as featuring the first hero, I guess that’s why his story is so basic. People come and take her; D’leh tries to get her back. Then the film is over. While all of this intense craziness is going on, we have a narrator (Omar Sharif) telling us things that are either obvious or pointless, and a old woman visionary who predicts the end of the film meaning we have even less reason to pay attention than you might first think. Their tribe is a mammoth hunting tribe, and they…wait, what? Mammoths weren’t around at this point. Oh. I’ve made the mistake of thinking about thinking while watching this. Okay, that’s fine. They begin hunting the (sigh) woolly mammoths who then escape by breaking into a gallop and…wait, what? Mammoths couldn’t gallop. They’re like elephants. Never mind, this is fine. Just a movie. It’s not like the film will be filled of a ridiculous hodge-podge of different eras and mythology. … It’s difficult to tell how much of this is ignorance and how much was them just trying to have fun. If the latter, it would have been nice if the audience got to share some of that enjoyment. I’d hazard a guess that they were trying to emulate the old Harryhausen films…such a shame they didn’t pull that off either. You could just sit back and ‘enjoy the ride’ if not for the fact that it takes itself so seriously that there is no ride to enjoy – just a slow meander from a senior citizen heading to a bus stop. You really have no idea what will happen next (and I’ve accidentally made that sound like something interesting when it is, in fact, the opposite in this case) and it never really makes sense. After they get savaged by the bandits and D’leh starts on his path with a few stragglers to find her, they travel through their icy mountains and suddenly enter a lush forest. It was at this point that the person I was watching it questioned whether the rest of the film was going to be exactly like "Apocalypto" (2006). Yes, indeed it is, my friend. Anyway, after they travel through the forest they come across a desert and naturally they’re now in Egypt. Now, this whole time, only two cool things have happened. The first is that New Zealander Cliff Curtis plays D’leh’s mentor…the poorly named Tic’Tic… and he resembles perfectly a popular New Zealand vagrant known as Blanket Man. It’s uncanny. Google this homeless man, he has his own Wikipedia entry. So that was an amusing aside and it’s also always good to see Cliff Curtis spinning the ethnic wheel and getting to play another race every couple months. Good on him. The next point of interest is that they encounter a sabre tooth tiger. Sure, this shouldn’t have been around and also not at the size that they portray but I didn’t care. The tiger was featured on the posters and I’ve always liked big cats, so I was excited for this. Again, such a shame that nobody seemed to care what I think as the big cat was on screen in two quick scenes, maybe lasting about a couple minutes all up. That’s it. No more. There’s even a huge rampaging scene in the final act which would have been perfect for a peeved tiger the size of a bus…but no. I’m not really in the forgiving mood for the lack of tiger. The hum drum story doesn’t do itself any favours with the randomness of what it puts in (boats that didn’t exist in this time period, pyramids that didn’t exist then, paper wasn’t invented yet, mammoths weren’t domesticated…pretty much everything that happened never happened, if you follow) but on top of that the rest doesn’t make sense from a logic standpoint. The bandits near the beginning kidnap about 15 people from the village to use as slaves. They then travel for days through different ecological landscapes to get back to …sigh… Egypt. Who, in their right mind, would ever travel that far through different climates just for a handful of slaves? A ridiculous concept. But then none of the choices made by characters in this film make any sense, so why bother? There is such a dearth of imagination in the story that I struggled to remain awake, constantly wishing the film would suddenly redeem itself at any point. Sadly, this weird mish-mash of "Apocalypto" and "300" (2006) just steadily creeps forward until it decides to roll some credits, surely only occurring once it’s convinced enough historians to leap to their demise after sitting through this bastardisation of their life’s work. It’s not fun. That is simply what it is lacking. It should have been fun and it’s not. Everything else could have been forgiven in the quest for escaping reality for two hours. But as the movie seems to have no interest in you enjoying yourself, all it’s other flaws are so much more readily apparent. It wasn’t even fun in that ‘so bad, it’s good’ way that I am so dearly entertained by. It was just dull and monotonous... also it needed more tiger.
Video
Presented in the film's original theatrical ratio of 2.40:1 this anamorphic transfer is rather excellent. Whether you like the film or not you can be sure the image will be stunning. The film is shot in an epic scale, with large vistas, massive production design and special effects all look solid on screen. The image is sharp and contrast is spot on. The colours look good, skin tones feel natural enough although are a little heightened at times (part of the colour palette), blacks are solid and bold and there's no noise amid them. Grain is kept to a minimum, and the print is clean without any dirt, specks or other issues of the sort. I spotted no compression related issues, no edge enhancement or other flaws. Generally speaking this is a top notch effort from Warner Brothers.
Audio
Two audio tracks are included on this release, both in Dolby Digital 5.1, the first in English and the second in English Audio Descriptive for the visually impaired. The film's 5.1 track is an aggressive mix that doesn't really let up. The dialogue is clean and distortion free, but it's the film's epic and action packed sequences that really shine. There's a lot of activity here from subtle ambient sounds that place you in the scene to the massive BC era animals that roam the landscapes. The range is incredible, the depth is as impressive and overall this can be regarded as a reference quality sound mix that'll blow your home theatre away. Optional subtitles are included in English, English for the hearing impaired, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew and Icelandic.
Extras
Warners have released this film with two featurettes, an alternate ending and a collection of deleted scenes. Below is a closer look at these supplements. "A Wild and Wooly Ride" featurette runs for 12 minutes 43 seconds. This is a clip on the visual effects of the film. They talk about finding locations, like New Zealand to film in, and the different creatures that they had to animate. Of particular note they discuss how they made the mammoths gallop despite those creatures not being able to when alive. This is second though to the Director’s revelation of a ‘revolutionary’ idea to use models of pyramids instead of CGI. What a genius. "Inspiring an Epic" runs for 12 minutes 25 seconds, and is a featurette on the genesis of the idea for the film. It came from a book called “Fingerprints of the Gods” and the author discusses his work here. Most of what he theorises about what we don’t know and do know about human history is far from accurate. But nonetheless he speaks at length and praises the director almost as much as the director compliments him. The alternate ending runs for 3 minutes 6 seconds. This reveals who the narrator is and adds a bit more to the film’s back-story. The logic behind it actually took away one of the film’s problems, which would have been better than the theatrical ending. That is, if this ending wasn’t acted so horribly that I mistakenly thought it was the gag reel. There are additional scenes included, lumped together as one and running for a total of 10 minutes 40 seconds, very short, and mostly superfluous, except for the tiger scene: - Tic’Tic is told the mammoths are here. - The spirit lady watches a man die, then ‘feels’ someone kill a goat which means the prophecy is under way. - Mammoth hunt after-party, with people discussing D’leh’s victory. - A humourous scene as Tic-Tic gets water accidentally poured on him while trying to climb. - Evolet reminisces about her slain tribe and realises these are the same men that have captured them. - D’leh falls into the pit and we see more interaction with the tiger that explains more. - Extended scene of D’leh reaching the African tribe. - The spirit lady is awoken due to all the people dying. - Travelling shots of D’leh and his followers. - Evolet being bathed while watched by the creepy ringleader.
Overall
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