At least the gore is satisfying (spoilers)

Rating: 4/10 (17 June 2002)

An unlucky film that was hoping to exploit the market for costume epics spawned by Braveheart in the late 1990s. The writing is feeble and the editing is a last ditch attempt to salvage a mess created when McTiernan left the movie during production. (Disney clearly had no hope for it and quietly farted it out in the Fall without any fanfare.) The plot centers on an Arab diplomat in the 10th century that traveled among the Vikings and is recruited to fight the Eaters of the Dead with them. The plot of Beowulf is used for about 20 minutes of the film. After a bunch of hints about monsters and magic and so on, the villains turn out to be the same marauding army of morons that show up in many action movies. They rape, pillage and say `har har' a lot. They're the same bunch from the bad Mad Max films, bad Stallone films and basically bad action films. In this movie, they mass for a great assault of guys in makeup and dishrags vs. the Vikings. Sorta like Thunderdome, but no fun. Like all evil hordes, they just lose the will to fight the outnumbered heroes when their ridiculous leader dies. The Eaters of the Dead start the film as wraiths that move with superhuman speed and agility. By the end they're about as menacing as stormtroopers running into Ewok traps.
The 13th Warrior is not great for MST3k purposes unless you really enjoying digging into Antonio Banderas' acting style. I like watching $100 million flops in the same way that I enjoy Ed Wood movies. The number of people posting here that actually admire this 90-minute accident kinda amazes me. Looking over them I noticed that 13th does indeed have a couple plot elements in common with Seven Samurai. I never thought of it because when I think of the Seven Samurai the first thing that comes to mind are those seven concrete personalities working together. I can't remember a single Viking from 13th, except that one was the big leader and another was the talkative joker who grinned a lot.
Without a doubt, this film has one of the most perfunctory `insert love interest here' subplots ever filmed.
It's also interesting for the most obviously lopsided climatic fight scene since the giant Wesley Snipes went head-to-head with the dapper Stephen Dorff in Blade.
If you're familiar with the history or Beowulf, it's kinda a weird experience to spend a whole film with one eyebrow arched in mild disbelief and confusion.