Movie review: Pathfinder

Last night I finally got to see Pathfinder on cable.

A friend of mine classifies this film, along with 300, as being in the "gorenography" category, and I can easily see why.

Of course, without the gore, you'd drop a 99 minute movie down to an 80 minute movie and the lack of plot would be even more glaring.

But, I digress. Let's start with cinematography.

This movie had a lot of potential. You had a fantastic setting, with amazing trees and mountains as well as plenty of coastline to play with.

And then they chose to film the majority of it in dark settings with little focus to the actual shots. It appeared that the only time we ever got the camera to focus on a particular part of a scene was when atrocities were being commited, about to be commited, or the director chose to try and have scenery convey emotion because he wasn't capable to getting the performance out of his actors.

I'm familiar with most of the actors in this film from other roles. They have ability. Even with as limited a script as this was (the entire movie is, for all intents and purposes, one giant chase scene, limited to people on foot or horseback,) there was enough there to both draw out good performances as well as give the viewer something to care about. However, between the script and the director, they could have just as easily cast the US Olympic swim team in this movie and it wouldn't have made a difference (my apologies to the US Olympic swim team if you are, in fact, all deserved winners of Tony, Emmy, Oscar and Golden Globe awards, my point was to chose a group whom I presume has limited acting experience but has united toward a common goal and suggest they could have replaced the professionals due to the limitations previously mentioned.)

So, cinematography is out, directing is out, I'm initimated the writing has issues, so let's go there.

This movie had potential. The concept wasn't bad (Norsemen raid the United States in approximately 1100, leave behind a kid who won't commit atrocities against the indigenous population, whos adopted by the indigenous people and grows up. Jump forward 15 years later and our nasty Norsemen have come back to settle for good, much to the objection of the one warrior who's trained with a sword (for those of you who are worried about spoilers, I've covered maybe the first 10 minutes of the movie.)

However, after that, there's not much that the movie has to offer. Yes, there's a strong female character love interest, but, for the most part, she gets in the way, and, while she's supposed to be a motivating factor, really, she could have been a "blood brother" and it would have been no different a movie for the most part.

Could this movie been written better? Absolutely, but it would have been a different movie. Not a chase film. And the movie would not have suffered from this change.

Finally, I'm going to address the action. In a word, I'd rather see the Sylvester Stallone epic "Cobra" that endure the action sequences from this film again. Once again, with a better director vision, this could have been an enjoyable chase/action film. Never once did I get the sense of urgency from the action. The lead character, at several points in time is being chased by a whole heck of a lot of ugly, armored, vicious beasts of human beings who have proven several times that the indigenous people are essentially ants to be removed from the picnic before you sit down to eat, yet, at no real time do we get the impression that this is more than a training exercise for him.

So, with most of the urgency removed, what's left?

The fight sequences are, for the most part, uninspired and too one sided to be of any interest. I suspect, even if I were of an age where this movie would have appealed to me, that the lighting was too dark to "enjoy" (if that's the right word) the various gratuitous (and believe me, they were gratuitous) limb and sundry body part removals. There wasn't even enough "spatter" to make Joe Bob Briggs raise an eyebrow.

So, as I mentioned at the top of the review, this movie was classified by a buddy of mine as Gorenography, but, honestly, I don't think it even deserves that classification. To classify it in that genre, would imply it deserves to be there. Instead, it would be better to shuffle it off to the side as wanting to be in that category, but not making it there. Not for lack of trying, but rather because to give it that much notice would possibly suggest someone else should see this movie.

And, since it didn't meet the "I was entertained" criterion, better to leave it to the side where it can moulder away.