Review of Solomon Kane (2009) by Cael M — 15 Aug 2013

The fantasy genre has been a troubled one in recent years, often producing movies that are visually striking but weak on every other important aspect, making for a bland, monotonous journey rather than an immersive, exciting journey. Films like this in recent memory include Paul W.S. Anderson's interpretation of The Three Musketeers, and rarely do we get a fantasy movie with such imagination and quality as Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Solomon Kane is no different from the troubled fantasy movie with the likes of The Three Musketeers (2011). It may seem unfair to compare such contrasting movies purely by the fact that they're "fantasy movies", but Solomon Kane fits the criteria for a bad movie of the genre exactly. It's visually beautiful, with incredible atmosphere and a nicely set-up world, yet it's never close to immersive or exciting. It often felt more like a b-movie rather than your average movie, and I don't mean that visually, but I mean that narratively. Everything about Solomon Kane lacks energy or life, and every scene starts with promise but ends up misusing the idea and ending off bitterly.

Solomon Kane opens up with a brutal, corrupt mercenary known as Solomon Kane (James Purefoy), who leads his group of men to attack a castle in a fortress town in order to steal gold, but each of his men are taken one after another by demonic creatures, and once Solomon reaches the gold, he is faced by the Devil's reaper with the intention of destining his soul to hell. Solomon escapes, and he realizes that he has to change his ways for the better and devote himself to purity and peace. He later meets a family of Puritans and assists them, but once they're ambushed by a brutal sorcerer named Malachi's marauders and one of the children named Meredith is kidnapped, Solomon must redeem his soul and rescue her. I can't say the opening got me on board, but after he realizes the man that he is and he goes to a snowbound sanctuary with the intention of redeeming his soul after escaping, I was very interested. It seemed like a movie that would offer a complex lead, and I can't quite say that he was complex, but he certainly was intriguing. The atmosphere that the movie sets up is brilliant, making full use of its variety of locations, whether its the beautiful, snowy plains or whether its the desolate, dark, wasteland-like plains. It's certainly a brooding film, and it's very well-shot, with interesting ambition for a fantasy film.

The acting is mostly cloudy with a few rays of sunshine, and that sunshine is mainly from the actor who played as Solomon Kane, James Purefoy. He fit the personality of an anti-hero excellently, and he often reminded me of a gunslinger, especially with his shady cape and costume while riding on a horse, as well as carrying a gun. Albeit some laughable moments and some questionable reactions and emotions to situations, I felt like his performance here was underrated, and I loved how he formed his character's personality as the sort of man who has "nothing to lose and everything to gain". Apart from the visuals, Purefoy was probably the biggest highlight of the movie. In terms of other acting, however, there really isn't anything special, and some performances are even below average. Max von Sydow is seriously wasted here as Solomon's father, only having a handful of minutes for screen time, and even then, the screen time that he had wasn't very interesting. The rest of the acting is sub-par stuff, with some decent performances but with the same amount of bad ones, such as some of the Puritan family, especially Meredtih. There are also many characters that really have no purpose other than to grunt and bleed.

However, despite the well-crafted world that was introduced, I must admit that I was never immersed into this world, and I was never exactly convinced of the conflicts that Solomon had to face. The biggest problem is the fact that there are so many laughable, stupid moments in the film that completely took me out of the film. There is no merit in the movie when it comes to the storyline or the writing, and that's a serious problem for a fantasy movie because it can't all be about the visuals. Lots of the dialogue feels like it's obviously being read from a script, with plenty of unnatural and ludicrous lines. Not even the storyline is anything worthwhile, often being bogged down and muddled by countless clichés and predictable directions. These problems were especially in the last hour, often relying on repetitive, poorly-constructed and badly-choreographed action sequences that go on far too long without entertaining or building tension whatsoever, and they become tedious. There are tons of continuity errors as well, and the biggest problem is the ending. There's a battle that didn't interest me mainly due to the fact that there wasn't any tension built up to it prior, and during the battle, an out-of-place CGI monster is thrown in as a touch of mainstream, and the very ending after the battle is absurd, nonsensical, and downright terrible.

I haven't read the works of Robert E. Howard regarding the character of Solomon Kane, but I'm almost certain it's probably better than this forgettable, inconsistent movie. Based on that, I don't know whether this movie is faithful to the source material, but as a stand-alone movie, I wasn't impressed. It certainly has the atmosphere down perfectly, and James Purefoy as Solomon Kane did a great job, but nothing else around those two things excited me. I also laughed quite a bit at some ridiculous, absurd scenes that tried to make things epic, and it doesn't help that the laughs were unintentional and that this movie tried to be something serious. I really wished I enjoyed it, because there aren't many things better than a fantasy film done right, but Solomon Kane certainly didn't reach the bar. It had potential, but it failed to reach it, although I'm sure that others would probably find more energy and life than I did. Solomon Kane is, at least to me, a poor fantasy movie that could've been so much better, perhaps almost potentially shifting the current direction of the genre.