Review of Conan the Barbarian (2011) by Nicholas R — 03 Aug 2012

I could tell from the very first scene (Ron Perlman performing a c-section on a battlefield without even looking) that this movie wasn't going to be very good. But the longer it went on, the more I appreciated once again how great the Milius/Schwarzenegger Conan was back in the day.

With this cast, which is actually quite good, and script, which, while far from good, is at least passable, a good director could have made a fairly solid Conan movie. Unfortunately, Marcus Nispel is pretty much the opposite of a good director and so we get a series of flat, uninvolving scenes with characters we don't care about and a lot of senseless carnage. Some of it looks kind of nice, but the bad editing and shaky camerawork ruin that, too. The bland music doesn't help, either.

I'll admit that there are one or two action scenes that are at least watchable, but they don't make up for the sloppy, half-assed feel of the movie as a whole.