Review of Conan the Barbarian (1982) by Edward B — 08 Apr 2009

Conan the Barbarian plays almost like a silent film. It's got a loud, booming, choir orchestra playing through the entire picture. There's barely any dialogue. The entire film moves sluggishly through scene after scene, this soundtrack loudly playing. It pauses briefly to allow for some inept dialogue that doesn't enhance anything about the story before carrying on. The music isn't particularly good either. It never once sets the mood or tone for the scene. Instead, it makes the film play out like an extended music video for the Symphony Orchestra.

My biggest problem with this film is that it isn't really about anything. There's some talk of Conan's plot to revenge the death of his family. However, the film incoherently follows Conan's life as if it were some kind of epic. But the casting of Arnold Schwarzennegger is perfect only in a physical sense, not in the actor's range to communicate any emotion. Yes, I know it's an Arnold movie, and character depth is secondary to violence, but.....there's barely even any action. And the action is severely dated; poorly choreographed with obvious continuity errors and actors throwing blood packs on themselves. The film attempts to be more of a pulp epic fantasy but only turns out to be an epic failure.

The script contains the biggest screenwriting flaw in that a narrator recites the entire film. Why? It doesn't create any sense of a legend or mythology for the character. It distances us so much from what is going on that it is impossible to care about anything that happens. Laughable sex scenes, painstakingly long scenes of characters doing nothing, no character depth, and no plot. It actually takes over forty five minutes just to set up the so called revenge narrative. There is nothing of value in this movie.