"THE 13TH WARRIOR" HOLDS TOGETHER!

Rating: Null/10 (14 September 1999)

With a movie like "The 13th Warrior", all the elements must work or else the whole thing falls apart. Luckily, following in the recent trend of high-quality movie-making, this film holds together well enough to be both entertaining and unique within it's genre. (Which is, I might add, a genre of "Braveheart"'s and "First Knight"'s that I could, as a whole, do without.)
Though he's excellent in the film -- his first real bit of acting in a long time -- that Spanish-American actor who's name I will not speak here is not the star of "The 13th Warrior". It should remain that way. Not that I don't like ol' A.B. but I don't know if he's got what it takes to carry an entire film alone. Here he doesn't have to worry about that because he's got such an outstanding screenplay to fall back on.
What makes the script so remarkable, you ask?
Well, it takes a rather trite idea and makes it, somehow, into a fresh, new kind of vision. In closing, from someone who doesn't even like these kinds of films, I have to say this was a very, very, very good job, guys.