Conan The Barbarian

I'll break this down for you. This film is about 10% dialogue, 10% carousing in bars, and 90% Sheer And Utter Fucking Mayhem. Mathematically minded people might question how that adds up, but the thing is, there's times when there's Carousing In Bars and Dialogue happening at the same time, there's times when there's Sheer and Utter Fucking Mayhem and Dialogue happening at the same time, and even times when Carousing In Bars, and Sheer and Utter Fucking Mayhem are happening at the same time. It should be noted that when Dialogue happens at the same time as something else, you'll be doing quite well to catch it. There are occasionally times when the dialogue gets to happen all on its own, but there's always the spectre of Sheer and Utter Fucking Mayhem looming large, ready to jump in at any time.

So, what plot can be gleaned. The hero of the piece is a guy called Khalar Zym, who, with his daughter, is on a desperate quest to save his wife from the fate that an uncaring world has bestowed on her. Obviously, most people think that he's the villain, because his wife was put to death for being an evil sorceress attempting to enslave the world, and Zym's quest is to reassemble a forbidden bone mask with necromantic powers, reactivate it with the blood of a pure and innocent girl, raise his wife from the dead, and with the knowledge thus gained from her sojourn in the afterlife, become a god and dominate the world forever. But I think he's the hero. It's all for love.

Anyway, Zym is tirelessly working his way through the barbarian tribes, slaughtering villages left and right, until he finally catches up with the last piece, hidden in the village run by Conan's father, Ron Perlman. (Ron Perlman, I think, has long since forgotten that what he does for a living actually involves acting, or at least, tells the movie makers that acting costs extra. So for all intents and purposes, Ron Perlman pretty much *is* Conan's dad.) Despite a valiant (and Sheer and Utter Fucking Mayhem filled) defence, the village falls, the mask is completed, and Conan is pretty much the only survivor, having had to watch Ron Perlman die a nasty death. Skip forward to Conan's young adulthood, and having sworn vengeance, Conan finally gets on the trail of his tormentor, having run into one of the distinctive novelty henchman than Zym goes around with, and getting the information that he needs from him. Zym is apparently now pretty much the unquestioned Lord of the whole continent, which kind of suggests that Conan is not the World's Greatest Detective.

Anyway, Zym has his objective (become god), Conan has his objective (kill him and smash everything). Game on.

I may have given the impression there that there's some plot in this film. Well, there's not. It's pretty much just that, and the rest of it is killing. The overall impression I got was of one of those DVDs you can get which is are just a long sequence of skateboarding mishaps; no plot, just a series of wince-making spills. Most of the time, there's no particular need to remember why we've got to this point of the plot; we have, and now there shall be violence. With that in mind, with your tongue firmly planted in your cheek, this is quite a fun bit of nothing. I think it'd be best watched in the company of friends, on DVD, with the understanding that it's OK to generally comment and take the mickey out of it throughout.