James Purefoy is one of the most talented and at the same time underrated actors of his generation. If you’ve ever seen the disaster that is A Knight’s Tale, you’ll know what I mean. A lot of actors bled for that movie, and only he manages to shine.
I’ve been watching both his career and his movies ever since, and with the short, beautiful exception of playing Mark Antony in HBO’s Rome, the world’s casting agents haven’t been very kind to him. Resident Evil. George And The Dragon. Vanity Fair. He didn’t get Bond and the two TV shows that he was involved with either didn’t even go into production (The Saint) or got cancelled after one season (The Philanthropist). So all in all things didn’t look good for him at the closing of the first decade of the new millennium.
Then along came Solomon Kane. It sounded good, I’ll admit that. James Purefoy as Robert E. Howard’s puritan superhero. Okay, that sentence contains the word puritan and I don’t think that goes very well with superhero. Still, the initial reviews from France, Spain and the UK sounded good and I hoped, oh how I hoped, that Purefoy would for once star in a good movie, one with franchise hopes. But it was not to be.
(Warning: extensive spoilers for a bad movie!)
Jonas described Solomon Kane as “A religious fanatic fights Darth Vader and his army of bald people in Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and how I wish that that description was off. It starts out well enough. A heavily CGI-enhanced assault on some African pirate stronghold. The CGI is decent, the fighting scenes well-choreographed. Then a quieter intro to the movie proper, set almost a year later. We see wintry landscapes, barren trees and a haunted, scarred Solomon Kane. Some of the dialogue already seems off somehow, true, but one can still hope. A little further down the still-not-muddy path he meets Pete Postlethwaite, who hasn’t had a decent part in even longer than James Purefoy, and the two share a long, meaningful look. “Had trouble paying the rent? Yeah, I’ve been there,” they seem to whisper. Then they remember that there are lines to be said and Pete alias William Crowthorn asks Kane if he wants to hitch a ride in the family cart. No, says Kane, and goes off, only to be waylaid and then end up with the Crowthorns after all, although the script blushes and scuttles away when we ask it how exactly that happened.
Soon after Kane is sharing looks of an entirely other kind with William’s daughter, Meredith, who seems to be maybe eleven, but luckily the girl gets abducted before Solomon can add pedophilia to his already impressive list of transgressions. Darth Leatherface and his army of bald men appear to take the girl and slaughter themselves through the mayor part of the Crowthorn family, and it is all downhill from there. The landscape turns from frosty and pretty to all mud all the time. At the beginning you kind of don’t notice, until you suddenly realize that you have been looking for the mud-eater from Holy Grail for the last ten minutes. (Yes, he got cut from Holy Grail, but maybe he found a new home here?) Sadly he’s not here, only a James Purefoy who seems to be looking increasingly embarrassed.
On it goes, sloshing through thigh-deep mud. There’s a crucifixion scene which will make your hair fall out (and turn you into a member of the Army of Bald Men presumably) if you’ve ever read anything about how crucifixions work or know just a tiny bit about human anatomy. There’s enough lame lines to bury your dog in. There’s a lot of mud. And there’s even more bald people. It gets even funnier when you realize that the only guy in the entire army that ever gets to have any lines has hair. Maybe their tongues fell out along with the other stuff? At the end we find out that Darth Leatherface is not only ugly but also Solomon’s brother, presumed dead, now an evil henchman. His boss, Malachi (he who has escaped from the novel Inkheart), has abducted Meredith because… yes… mhm… because he couldn’t find anyone with more bad-ass friends, I think. Well, anyway, he needs her innocent blood (quoting the movie here, quoting and cringing) for some supremely evil deed or other. Oh… and he’s sitting pat in the middle of Solomon’s old living room, seeing that he’s taking over the Kane ancestral stronghold. And then there’s the scene in which Solomon and his merry men break in. It really will take too long to explain all the cheesy lines and bad scene transitions involved, but in my book going in the “secret way” does not entail coming out in the middle of the central courtyard in broad daylight, dear Solomon.
In the end the girl gets saved (taking her innocent blood entails scratching her wrist, at which point we wonder if Solomon really needed to go through all this trouble to save her, since Malachi will presumably just let her go after he’s done with his ritual). There’s a humongous CGI demon to battle, but that kind of takes only ten seconds and the beast is too badly integrated and designed to make it believable anyway.
And that’s about it. What we are left with is the stale taste of mud and shaving cream and the feeling that James Purefoy is done for good now.
It is really sad to see what a disaster this movie is. The cinematography remains decent throughout, but the film often slips into unintentional comedy through the sheer badness of both dialogue and sets. The music by Klaus Badelt is decent bordering on good, one just wishes that the score had any relation to what is happening on the screen. Rachel Hurd-Wood is pretty and acts decently, given how crappy her lines are, but there seems to be some sort of hinted sexual tension between Meredith and Solomon that makes it just wrong. And James Purefoy himself… he tries. Sometimes he seems to be looking into the camera, when the editor isn’t watching, and you see silent despair in his eyes.
I really wanted to like this movie. And I really wanted to know if it was good. I’m not regretting those two hours of my life, honestly… but good lord, was this movie crap.
Interesting links:
I guess we’re going to have to agree to disagree regarding the film’s quality. Though there were some elements that failed (the crucifixion, for example) I think most of the elements you write off as cheesy or laughable deserve a little more credit. Certainly Purefoy does, as I think he – and everyone in the production – gave the film an admirable amount of effort, and his enthusiasm for the project in press and behind-the-scenes shines through. Ultimately most of the problems of the film can be laid squarely at the feet of the script, but I think the cinematography, fight choreography, music and acting are enough to elevate this above the usual Sword-and-Sorcery fare. Certainly I don’t see anything particularly wrong with the sets.
I think the story was difficult for some to follow at first glance, but there are explanations for some things:
Soon after Kane is sharing looks of an entirely other kind with William’s daughter, Meredith, who seems to be maybe eleven, but luckily the girl gets abducted before Solomon can add pedophilia to his already impressive list of transgressions.
Well for one thing, Meredith was 16. For another, 12 was a perfectly reasonable marrying age in Elizabethan England (provided one had the parents’ permission), so if Kane was looking at Meredith “that way” there wouldn’t be any problem. For yet another, I never got any impression that Meredith’s crush was anything but unrequited, and that Kane was merely very fond for her because she’s a nice girl.
His boss, Malachi (he who has escaped from the novel Inkheart), has abducted Meredith because… yes… mhm… because he couldn’t find anyone with more bad-ass friends, I think.
Malachi abducted Meredith to lure Kane to him. The witch’s mark was a sort of homing-beacon, so that the raiders would know which one to spare. This was as much about claiming Kane’s soul as it was unleashing the demon into the world.
In the end the girl gets saved (taking her innocent blood entails scratching her wrist, at which point we wonder if Solomon really needed to go through all this trouble to save her, since Malachi will presumably just let her go after he’s done with his ritual).
I think it’s pretty clear that wouldn’t be the case. Malachi’s men have been enslaving and destroying the Devonshire landscape, you really think he’d let Meredith go?
Ultimately, as an adaptation of Howard’s character, it’s a complete failure. The character and story are not only alien to Howard, but in many ways antithetical. It’s a shame, as Purefoy could easily be a strong Kane based on his showing here. But at the same time, I don’t think the film is as monstrous a failure as you state. It’s certainly better than some of the big-budget dreck I’ve seen in cinemas (Clash of the Titans, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, The Last Airbender). Ah well.
I think most of these things aren’t misunderstandings, just Verena being sarcastic.
While historically accurate, it’s still not necessarily something nice. We both felt the vibe there to be a little strange; sometimes Kane just seemed fond of her, at other times a more romantic (potential) relationship was implied. We were not the only people to be slightly creeped out by this.
Yes, but it’s all a little confused, isn’t it? After all, they do crucify Kane, and it is only by coincidence that he survives. If all they wanted to do is kill him, why use the girl to lure him? Why not just grab him and ship him off to Malachi when they had him?
I think Verena was just commenting on the silliness of the scene, and the less-than-impressive blood sacrifice.
I must say we both enjoyed Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender a great deal more than this film. The Last Airbender was deeply flawed, but had some good moments, and Clash of the Titans had some enjoyable characters and battles despite being utterly silly and trashy. (Transformers simply isn’t a film. It’s some sort of distortion of reality that can drive you mad.)
As for the sets: when Monty Python portrayed the Middle Ages as consisting of mud, mud and mud, it was a joke, not a realistic depiction. Here we are supposed to take it seriously. And we couldn’t help but laugh at the skull-decorated castle at the end.
However – it is your right to disagree, and we thank you for doing so in a friendly, civilized manner.
This may not be much of a surprise, but I agree with Jonas. Just wanted to clarify one tiny thing:
It is a little silly that Malachi just scratches Meredith’s palm after this huge buildup to the whole sacrifice scene. And the line that accompanies it is beyond bad. It’s very anticlimactic, seeing that this is what Malachi has supposedly been working towards all the time. One almost expects Solomon to shrug and hand her a band-aid.
That’s my problem with the final scene.
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Hmm. Well, I’ll take your word for it: none of the friends, colleagues and fellow Howard fans I know noticed this. But then, we were concentrating on the mess the film was making with the source material, so that might’ve clouded our judgement.
Yeah… Hmm. That’s a good point. (Powers of Strained Rationalization, activate!) At a guess I’d say that Malachi was softening Kane up: they got lucky when Kane drank himself into a stupor, so they just wanted to keep him strung up for a few days while also presenting a stark warning to would-be rebels. Death by crucifixion can take days: a strong man like Kane would last a while. Of course, then the soldiers intervened.
I won’t argue that. A bit of a change from most Howardian blood-sacrifices, where hundreds of souls are drained of blood in invocation of some dark god.
“Mud, mud and mud” is an accurate description of half the towns and farms in my area (rural Scotland, which isn’t much different from 17th Century Devonshire in more than one respect). Seriously, there’s mud everywhere. Solomon Kane could’ve been filmed round my back garden. Which is kind of scary when I think about it…
Not at all, and I appreciate you being as courteous in your response. There’s a Robert E. Howard quote I live by: “civilized men can be more discourteous than savages, because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” I like to think I converse in a manner befitting a courteous savage!
I still think that The Last Airbender and Clash of the Titans were utterly worthless tripe, on the same circle of nonexistence you condemn Transformers – CotT especially, it’s the first time I actually felt like walking out of a film – but hey, that’s what opinions are all about.
I see what you mean now, and I can’t disagree. Malachi and the entire climax in general were by far the weakest part of the film (though I had major problems with the crucifixion and his heavenward soliloquy)
I think my problem with all the mud is that I got the most intense sense from the movie that there simply was no civilization; basically I saw that caricature of the Middle Ages we see in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of the Middle Ages (which isn’t even when this movie is set) or want to defend the intellectual poverty of that time; quite the opposite. But this was too much, and too silly.
There were some great landscapes early in the film, though.