Review of Red Sonja (1985) by Matthew S — 21 May 2010

It seems like fantasy films, especially older ones, end up falling short in a number of areas. Most obvious in the older ones are the effects, but that can be overlooked with good writing, acting, etc. Unfortunately, much of that is usually pretty bad too. Red Sonja falls short in pretty much every area. Except some of the swordplay, and except the Morricone score. But there's not much to say about that, so I'll be detailing the shortcomings.

There are so many stories about destroying something to save the world, and some of them are good, but this is the most basic, surface-level version of that story possible. There is so little detail given about the world, the characters, or even the object of destruction itself that I didn't really care if the world was saved or not. In fact, the only two characters I found interesting were not the title character or the top-billed actor (which are different people, strangely enough), but the comic relief duo of Falkon and the prince. And, of course, there wasn't much in the way of acting to help anything along. This was bad, even for an '80s Arnold movie. There's more, but it's pretty easy to pick out. Just make you leave this for when you're in a bad movie mood.