By The Will Of Genghis Khan [DVD] [2009]

When you have a story as tremendous and exciting as the life of Genghis Khan, the man who united the Mongol tribes and put both Europe and the Middle East in terror, it's hard to make a bad movie from it. But sadly, that's what's been achieved here. On the positive side, the blu ray is pretty impressive, and the visuals are stunning throughout (though with the magnificent landscape of Mongolia on their side, that was inevitable). But that's about it. For starters, the language options are zero. You get your choice of the Russian version (featuring badly dubbed non-Russian actors) with or without subtitles. There are actors from Russia, Japan, China and Mongolia involved, though peculiarly (since in his career the Khan did have quite a lot to do with at least 3 out of the 4 nations) most of them play Mongolians - and rather badly. The cover displays a Japanese character who serves one of the Mongol warlords, and whose presence in the film is obviously only to bring in some Japanese finance and a Japanese audience; his role is far, far less significant than the cover suggests and I'll be surprised if he gets as much as 10 minutes on screen. The storyline is badly garbled and disjointed. The plot jumps from period to period of Genghis' life, then hops back for the odd flashback, till you can hardly be bothered to focus on any of the action - you are just waiting for it to cut off and jump over a week, a month, a decade. It was based on a Russian novel in which the three main protagonists are Genghis (or Temujin), his blood brother Jamuka, and a boyhood friend of theirs who becomes a shaman. That idea intrigued me, but when it comes to the film it all falls to pieces. There is so little focus on their friendship that it becomes meaningless when they are at odds with each other. In fact this is the trouble; nothing is allowed to mature and develop, it just kangaroos on over time to get to the bits the film-makers found interesting. They spend more time on Temujin's wedding night than on his period as a prisoner. You never get any real idea why anyone would bother to follow Temujin, apart from repeated mystic spoutings about it being the will of heaven. The characterisation is weak at best. And I found the comic relief - a man who is hilarious because he is slow-witted, stammers, and has an extra testicle - extraordinarily offensive. It might have been acceptable in a movie from the 30s, or in Genghis' own time, but in the 21st century it is truly unpleasant and unnecessary. The battle scenes are passable but nothing special, and there are remarkably few of them. I don't mind a film having more dialogue than action scenes, but when the dialogue is as poor as in this, and the plot as badly hashed, it would be nice to say the action scenes save it. They don't. Halfway through I was nodding off; I only made it to the end by the aid of extra-strong coffee, and at the end I wondered why I bothered.

...but it's not! The previous reviewer - Chinatown Blue "cthulhoid" - says it all rather well. The only redeeming feature is that it looks good on BD.

Bllleeeaargghh! Puke! Where's the ticket office? I want a refund.

The story follows Temujin (Sergei Egorov) from his birth to him forming his brotherhood with Jamuga (Orgil Makhaan) and then all the way to his eventual uniting of the all the Mongol tribes.

One of the main problems I had with this movie was the way it was filmed as it seemed a lot more like a Docu-Drama than a actual movie. There is hardly can real conversations and everything happens really quick, even with a running time of just under 2 hours.

The acting and directing are both average and the action sequences are poorly staged and its virtually impossible to know who is on whose side during the battles.

Overall a very boring muddled film and if anyone wants to watch a good film based around Genghis Khan then I'd advise people to watch 'Mongol'