Stuff for Dads

Tuesday, 10 February 2009

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (DVD)

Starring: Jason Statham, Ray Liotta, Burt Reynolds, Shaggy, Gimli, Hellboy, Terminator 3 and that Lara-a-like who was in CSI: New York for a bit.

Rated: 15.

Story: A farmer in a generic fantasy kingdom battles his way through a horde of generic green men in rubber masks to defeat a generic evil wizard on a generic quest to rescue his generic pretty wife.

And the farmer's name?

Farmer.

I mean, honestly...

Comments: You're going to have to like sword fights for this one.

Sometimes these are the kind of sword fight where a hero can leap up and run across the heads of a gaggle of opposing soldiers to reach his goal, where 'elves' swing on vines that move as if the end off-screen is attached to a zip line and where a boomerang can hit two 'orcs' hard enough to knock them out but still return to the thrower's hand. Mostly they're the kind of sword fight where the hero laboriously cuts a swathe through a massed brawl of extras. It's probably the same extras in each scene, only the scenery changes - a village, a forest, a forest at night, a cave, a forest in the rain, a barn, a forest at night in the rain, a different forest...

Seriously, this film must have the about the highest SFPM (Sword Fights per Minute) rate of any movie ever, making it rather dull and repetitive after not very long. This isn't helped by poor dialogue, hammy acting and a plot that's less sophisticated than those featured in a majority of the old Dungeons & Dragons cartoons.

The combined result is something that appears more of a montage of deleted scenes from the Lord of the Rings than anything else.

Conclusion: Plenty of swords but you'll soon tire of them and spend most of the film wondering what form of sorcery was used to convince so many recognisable faces to take part.

Explosions: None.
Swords: Countless.
Cute females: Three.
Boomerangs that defy the laws of physics: One.
Ways the film could be improved: Plenty. (Almost anything would work. For instance, how about some Scooby-Doo? Matthew Lillard doesn't look right without a computer-animated dog next to him.)

Rating: 2/5.

LOVEFiLM DVD Rental