Review of Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (2007) by Peter Y — 19 Sep 2009

Long.

Or perhaps it just felt that way....

Perhaps too long/slow and perhaps too ambitious. There is unfortunately a sense that they tried to make this film look good above all else and so as a result, the story telling suffers.

Perhaps the biggest failing of the film is that it tries too hard to tie together events that occur years apart into one coherent and continuous storyline. Of course, things that happen are related but because we are only ever shown snippets of time over a period of a decade (or is it more?) we never get and real detail of the characters and more importantly, their relationships with each other. A lot of the time, we are just told to accept things but are shown no basis for why it is so.

Everything happens this way from Temudgin meeting his wife to be to the meeting of his "brother" to his winning the trust of the tribe/soldiers.

Perhaps this sort of thing would've been better made as a drama instead of an action film and maybe that's the problem with this film. The life od Genghis Khan is set in war but much about the man is not. Maybe it isn;t possible to make one film about him that can tell us about the fighting and about the character.

Again, it's a shame because the film is shot beautifully.