Good effects, nice idea, but that plot.....

Rating: 7/10 (22 June 2000)

Where do I start...... Well, the atmosphere in this movie was good, so was the setting. I liked the "Arab" between the "Normen". So far for the positive parts, now for the negative.
The story was unconvincing and impossible. The movie starts out weak, gets better, but the last half hour was an anticlimax. The movie's climax was somewhere when the cannibals storm the village for the first time, what was if I recall it well, around the 40th minute of the movie. BAD!!!!!! Very bad indeed!!
I will now sum up the things that are impossible or leave a questionmark in my head.
How can an Arab possibly meet Normen in the desert? The larger part of the movie is set in Scandinavia. How come there are africans among the cannibals? How come that not all cannibals are african, but some also have the Scandinavian look? Why is the leading part for Antonio Banderas and is the heroic part in the final scene for a minor character? Why is the romance between Antonio and this girl worked out so poor? Why are there so many small scenes in the movie, where they never get back to?
I am sure I still forgot some questions, but at this very moment I can't recall them.
To conclude I want to state that after when I saw the movie, my first impression was: "Cool!"
Than I went to the bathroom and started thinking...When I came back and thought over about how to comment for IMDB, my conclusion was that this movie was actually very poor, and only to be recommended to real lovers of the medieval genre.
Regards, Johan Romeijn