The Thirteenth Warrior

It is never a particularly auspicious sign when a film hangs around in post-production for over a year, and in The Thirteenth Warrior’s case, the process has been so protracted that director John McTiernan’s subsequent feature (the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair) has already beaten it to the big screen. It’s here now, anyway, though whether or not it deserves to see the light of day is another question altogether.

While McTiernan’s handling of Die Hard was as slick and effective as glossy mainstream cinema gets. The Thirteenth warrior is a thoroughly miserable affair, as dismal and witless as any big summer event movie of recent years. Apparently intended as an epic swashbuckler in the style of The Magnificent Seven it is so laborious and bereft of imagination it becomes quite depressing – and long before it runs its two-hour course, the intelligent viewer will be dangerously close to coma.

Antonio Banderas, having mastered the swordfighter/horseman routine effortlessly enough in The Mask of Zorro, reprises his performances here almost exactly – but The Thirteenth Warrior lacks any of Zorro’s flair and completely misses the sly humour. Banderas’, character is an Arab poet named Ahmed bin Fadlan – clean-living, devoutly religious and slow to violence – who is reluctantly drafted into an army of bloodthirsty Vikings, uncouth and foul-mouthed and fond of a brawl.

The culture clash ensures that they don’t instantly hit it off, but good old Anto eventually wins the Viking’s respect thanks to his magnificent feats of swordsmanship, and willingly accompanies his new mates to their Nordic homeland in order to liberate the place from a mysterious flesh-eating terror.

It might sound like fun, and in theory it should be – but the acting is so wooden, and the dialogue so leaden, that there’s nothing to hold on to at all except for a few entirely unremarkable swordwielding set-piece battles, none of which do a whole lot to lift the blood pressure. In fact, the recent film The Thirteenth Warrior most closely recalls is 1996’s disastrously overblown Cuthroat Island – both pictures aspired to a sort of epic status, only to wind up as sub-saturday morning matinee muck of the worst kind.

While no-one in their right mind would expect philosophical depth from a film of this nature, a dash of wit and flair surely isn’t too much to ask. Or is it?