I wish it were better

Rating: 7/10 (4 July 2007)

I'm honestly glad that some of what was in Crichton's book - like the Neanderthals - never made it to the screen. It's unfortunate that what did make it is pretty much nonsense. All of the Beowulf parallels are gone (they weren't very clear in the book, either), along with the personalities of most of the characters. The movie looks cheap and ugly, and things like the "stand in a circle while they conveniently come at us from all sides in the round building" bit are just laughable. The action is pure slop; it seriously looks like no one bothered to stage it.
The one bright spot is Dennis Storhøi, whose sharp intelligence and joking comradeship with Antonio Banderas' petulant Ahmed Ibn Fadlan actually breathes some life into this mess. It's too bad that the Norwegian Storhøi, who followed this up with a performance as George in _Who's Afraid of Virigina Woolf?_ that won the Norwegian Theatre Critics Award (Teaterkritikerprisen), will likely never get another chance at an English-language film. He's good (and Banderas is better when around him) - the film is not.
(After writing this review, I read complaints from several of the other Scandinavian actors that scenes explaining who their characters were and exploring their world and relationship with each other as a "band" were removed in favor of more "action" material from the Chichton-directed re-shoot after original director John McTiernan was fired. That just makes this even more of a failure.)
Update 7/16/2017: I've since watched this several times again, and each time I gain more respect for what the film could have been. I'd even say that the actors did such a good job of working together as a "band" that their scenes survive the worst additions, like the laughable gore effects and the already-noted chaotic battle sequences.