FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

chaos-rampant I like the story about the renowned Taoist master who was summoned by Genghis Khan in Beijing; missing him there, he had to travel for three years, crossing half of Asia to find him in his camp in Afghanistan, and can you imagine the arduous trek to meet a fearsome man capable of who knows what if displeased. Nothing fruitful came from the encounter eventually, the warlord wanted to know about a secret recipe for immortality, the sage had only Taoism to give. They went their own ways after, one to raid India, the other walked back home. But something did happen. The long journey was chronicled by a companion, giving us a rare glimpse of life from the Great Wall to the Hindu Kush, only possible because an old man set out to go.Journeys can be about who's waiting on the other end or not; but they're always about life glimpsed in the process, ways of traveling. Films too of course.The destination here is a portrait of Genghis, his rise from nothing in the steppe to unify the tribes. It leaves off as he's about to embark on epoch-making history so we don't get the sweeping conquest and atrocity, we get a national hero molded to necessity by a ruthless world. A second film was in the works apparently but scrapped.No matter. It's the lack of real journey that I miss. Oh we do get some glimpse of Mongolian rite and custom along the way, the savagery of life, it was filmed near where events must have taken place, and the faces and dresses on actors look "real" enough, even though the lead is Japanese. But it's always all part of obviously plotted theatrics. The whole shorthand used to jot down this chronicle, the breath that animates it, the eye that looks, none of it feels like it draws soul from another time and corner of the world, none of it jolts from the commonness of "historic epic".I end up with a handful of movie scenes scattered about the steppe, borrowed gestures, poses and silences of somnolence, movie battles, and I'm just not satisfied with airbrushed convention and generic TV- level imagination as ground to walk on. It takes me nowhere.Fun thing to note. This is about a victor who managed to concentrate all this power and then just spilled it over half the known world, leveling and scattering instead of building. The neighboring Chinese were as genocidal as he was (more in fact), but had been cultivating for centuries a narrative of cohesion that creates culture that endures to create abstraction. When they celebrate their treacherous past, it might be Hero that we get.

grantss Disappointing.I love biopics, so was very keen to see this, especially as I don't know much about the life of Genghis Khan. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed. A lot of the bigger picture detail is left out. The script leaves huge gaps in the history, gaps which which would have been more interesting that the detail that was provided. Because of these gaps you don't get a feel for how Genghis Khan achieved his power, and the whole thing becomes disjointed and confusing.Acting felt very wooden, too.A movie that leaves you with more questions than answers.

l_rawjalaurence Some reviewers have referred to the fact that MONGOL: THE RISE OF GENGHIS KHAN is a low-budget epic, as compared to its Hollywood equivalents. What makes this film so outstanding is its un-likeness to the Hollywood product; rather than focusing on special effects, Sergey Bodrov's film centers on Temudjin (Tadanobu Asano) and the way in which he develops the kind of iron will that transforms him into a great leader. Although repeatedly captured by his enemies, including arch-bad guy Jamukha (Honglei Sun), he always finds a way out to return to his wife Borte (Khulan Chuluun), with a combination of brute force and low cunning. Structurally speaking, MONGOL: THE RISE OF GENGHIS KHAN is structured around a series of conflicts between various factions in twelfth century Mongolia, each vying for power. The prestige attached to being called "Khan" is so great that it attracts rival leader Targutai (Amadu Mamadakov) - although he repeatedly describes Temudjin as his brother, we know that this is a term of convenience. Bodrov's film contains some stunning landscape shots: filmed in the wilds of Mongolia, as well as Kazakhstan, this is a visual feast, making us aware of how insignificant human beings can be when set against the world they inhabit. It is a tribute to Asano's performance as Temudjin that he manages to transcend this feeling and come across as a genuine hero, one who could quite literally conquer the landscape. The battle-sequences are brilliantly filmed, as are the scenes showing the Mongols galloping across the terrain on horseback: Bodrov's tracking shots are some of the best I have seen in a modern epic. MONGOL: THE RISE OF GENGHIS KHAN is rip-roaring entertainment on the one level, but also demonstrates an alternative cinematic treatment of the epic genre.

museumofdave The Historical Epic is a disappearing staple from Hollywood, but many of them are still made in other parts of the world where it is probably a good deal cheaper to do so--Mongol is a perfect example, a grand, sweeping biographical tale about the development of a leader--this time set in Mongolia in the 12th Century.The scenery in Mongol is incredibly varied and beautiful and the battle scenes, when they come, are stark and brutal, but the main focus here is the development of the main character from childhood to maturity.Tadanobu Asano captures the quiet tenacity of a young man whose loyalties are to a way of life he chooses to defend: he picks out a wife when he is 9 years old (she later claims she chose him), and remains faithful to his idea of family and home no matter what the exterior challenges--it's a humane film about a violent time, charged with mythic resonance and incredible scope.