Movie Review: '10,000 BC'

Writer/director Roland Emmerich only does big and bombastic. The word "subtle" is seemingly missing from his personal dictionary and certainly missing from his less-than-cerebral action-adventures, of which Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow are two prime examples. They're usually much more amusing than this though…

A Roger Corman B-movie without any of the camp or the sense of unadulterated fun, 10,000 BC is your quintessential coming-of-age tall tale about a young under-appreciated upstart who finds his chi and becomes the great man he was always destined to be. Said upstart is D'Leh (Steven Strait— The Covenant ), a hunter in the peaceful Yagahl tribe and an outsider, thanks to his father's earlier abandonment of the clan.

Getting the chance to prove his worth when the tribe are attacked by slave raiders and several of the village people are kidnapped, including his love Evolet (a dirty, dreadlocked but still cute Camilla Belle— When a Stranger Calls remake), D'Leh bravely mounts a daring rescue mission that takes him to places and encounters with prehistoric predators that he could never have imagined.

Apocalypto in theme (Gibbo got there first, and Gibbo did it soooo much better), apocalyptically dire in execution, 10,000 BC has no redeeming features whatsoever. With pretensions to be a big, exciting, pulpy, comic book-type adventure film that whisks you away to a world unimagined, in reality it is nothing but a cheesy, clichéd and brainless film that, to its constant detriment, cribs repeatedly from earlier, similarly-themed and better-made movies.

Lumbering from one derivative, badly put-together, poorly choreographed set-piece to the next, we are subjected in turn to a pulse-deadening mammoth hunt, a monotonous attack by the slave raiders upon the village, an altercation with some primeval ostriches (ooh scary!), an encounter with a incongrously compassionate giant sabre-toothed tiger and the anti-climatic end battle between D'Leh and the tyrannical god behind the diabolical slave ring.

It's unstimulating to say the least, so don't be surprised to find yourself restless and more interested in what artificial ingredients went into making whatever junk food you decided to overindulge on during the movie.

Badly written by Emmerich (with an endless string of gibberish prophecies, each more incomprehensible than the last), badly directed by Emmerich, badly acted by the entire cast and badly brought-to-life by special effects house Tatopoulos Studios (the sabre-toothed tiger being its major dud), 10,000 BC is—if you hadn't twigged—just plain bad through and through. An uncomfortable and embarrassing viewing experience.

One star out of five