at first glance , i thought that the sword and the sorceror had promise .
its plotline goes like this : the evil king cromwell , desiring to take over the world , resurrects an evil , ancient sorceror , xusia for power .
he attacks the kingdom of eh - dan and kills young prince talon 's parents .
given a triple - bladed sword ( which can shoot bad guys , like a gun ) by his dying father , talon vows for revenge .
eleven years later , when he 's established his own army , the mercaneries , he vows to take back his kingdom .
along the way , he meets up with alana , whose village is attacked by drunken guards and her brother is kidnapped by cromwell .
talon vows to help , and , after a series of minor escapades , eventually ends up rescuing alana 's brother ( and several other prisoners ) , only to be captured himself ( in other words , put on a cross to be crucified ! ) .
fortunately he frees himself , rescues alana from marrying cromwell , defeats xusia , and then cromwell , all with his triple bladed sword ( during the final battle , the blade breaks , but talon finishes cromwell off by using a hidden dagger in the blade ) .
then , everything ends happily .
unfortunately , the sword and the sorcerer is not even half as good as it sounds .
what would have been a great film is completely destroyed by uneven plot jumping , bad acting , and gruesomely gory , bloody scenes .
never once does the story seem to connect together , it just jumps around repeatedly .
this problem is extremely noticeable in the opening scene where cromwell resurrects xusia .
after telling him that he needs his help , he leads the warlock out into daylight , but then stabs him and sends him careening off a cliff afterwards .
wait a minute , did n't the plotline say that he needs the help of xusia in order to invade eh - dan , which he can not do by military force ?
if that is the case , why does he dispose of xusia after resurrecting him ?
and why does he manage to take over
eh - dan anyway
?
these questions are just never - no , never - answered in the film .
another example is that one moment we see talon fighting for his life ,
another moment we see him just about to be crucified during alana 's wedding to cromwell ( ! ) , and finally at the end , instead of settling down with alana , he just tells her to " wait " , and then he just rides off !
in addition to the extremely bloody scenes , this uneven plot jumping completely destroys what would have been a great fantasy adventure .
even some attempts to make it exciting ,
a few fire scenes , battle scenes , do n't work .
it just completely fails altogether miserably .
the only good thing about this film is its musical score , contributed by david whittaker , who had an ( extremely ) short music composing career .
the score is boomy and adventurous , powerful , and a billion times better than this film is .
my suggestion
: steer the hell away from this bloody mess and buy the soundtrack album instead ( if you can find it ) .
ironically , though , before the film 's credits roll , there is a message indicating that a sequel , tales of the ancient empire , would follow .
to my relief ( and delight ) , it never got into production , because the sword and the sorcerer laid an egg at the box office , grossing only $ 39 million .
critics were right on in slamming the sword and the sorcerer , all right .
leonard maltin rightfully called it " second rate in scripting , and acting " and at - a - glance film reviews called it " a confusing , stupid , unimaginative , unengaging , bloodfilled bore
" . i totally agree with these reviews , all right , and i hope that this piece of # $ % ! will be forgotten about .
there are far better fantasy movies than the sword and the sorcerer .
i hope you get a good laugh out of this review , but i am not laughing .
in fact , my insults do n't even come close to the gruesome sickness that this film gave me throughout its 100 minute running time .
Output: N