Decent entertainment

Rating: 4/10 (4 November 1999)

This movie, directed by Michael Crichton and based on his novel "Eaters of the dead", is considered one of those quite massive mistakes that sometimes happen in the movie industry. The movie was delayed by months (maybe even years) and the test screenings were disastrous. In an effort to save what could possibly be saved the movie was cut down and released in a more or less completely altered version.
What appealed to me with this movie was most of all the swinging of swords. I don't what it is with such movies, but ever since i was a kid and up until today swordplay holds a certain appeal to me. Probably that's why i've even seen the Conan-movies a few times too much... Anyway, when it comes to sword-swinging action like this movie there are two things that must be included: (1) Well-filmed fencing scenes, (2) Blood.
The problem with many movies today is that the ratings-system must have gone overboard since the early 1980's when Conan got away with displaying gushing fountains of blood when people were sliced with swords and mauled with axes and hammers. There is little blood in this movie and that's of course a letdown, but a bigger letdown is the lack of decent fencing-scenes. The action-scenes are few and far between and much too short.
This movie does feel like an edited version of itself. It's probably hard to salvage a movie that's been put through so much editing and re shooting as this one, so i guess the result could have been much worse. It's not nearly as awful as critics at the time made it out to be, but it's definitely flawed. Crappy writing and pale actors doesn't help the issue, and the fact that the final battles hint at a budget swiftly running dry is not to the films benefit either.
The verdict? Recommended to fans of the genre i guess. If you like viking/barbarian-style action movies there is not much to choose from today (at least not much that's not child-safe). This is not a good movie, but not as bad as it could have been. I rate it 4/10.