Mongol: Critic Reviews

Russian filmmaker Sergei Bodrov contrasts images of sweeping landscape and propulsive battle with potent scenes of emotional intimacy in Mongol, his quite grand, quite exotic, David Lean-style epic.

Mongol is a big, ponderous epic, its beautifully composed landscape shots punctuated by thundering hooves and bloody, slow-motion battle sequences.

While the historical accuracy may be dodgy, Mongol is a sweeping and quasi-mythical epic that recalls Lawrence of Arabia.

The result is a wallow in old movie pleasures, full of battles, flying dust, thousands of men on horseback, beautiful women, treachery, slaughter, really cool hats and even more slaughter.

Bodrov and Arif Aliyev wrote the film, which was one of this year's foreign-language Oscar nominees, and their account is framed as a drama of inflamed loins and intense loyalty.

The founder of history's greatest contiguous empire gets an appropriately bravehearted movie, an exciting actioner from Russian director Sergei Bodrov.

I don't know the Mongolian word for panache, but Mongol's got plenty of it. The battle scenes are as notable for their clarity as their intensity; we can follow the strategies, get a sense of who's losing and who's winning.

A thoroughly rousing hunk of celluloid, a war saga that blends the sturdiest conventions of old-fashioned heroic storytelling with a few pixilated battle enhancements - check out the soaring blood globs - of the kind that spattered across 300.

A ferocious film, blood-soaked, pausing occasionally for passionate romance and more frequently for torture. As a visual spectacle, it is all but overwhelming, putting to shame some of the recent historical epics from Hollywood.

A grandly kitschy rendering of Genghis Khan's early years, the ones revealing how a boy became a ruthless yet humane warrior, devoted family man and all-around good fellow, Mongol might as well be called Braveheart in a Yurt.

The first part of what director Bodrov promises to be a trilogy tracing the life of the historic conqueror, Mongol is great cinema, great fun.

Mongol is the first film of a proposed trilogy that charts his conquest of half the known world. If the sequels match this one, they can't come soon enough.

A broad, old-fashioned epic in the David Lean mold.

The film, a foreign-language Oscar nominee, is epic in scope, in scale, in story, in everything. It has as much action as any brain-dead Hollywood blockbuster, but Mongol also has heart and intelligence.

Japanese indie idol Asano smolders as maverick Temudgin [Khan].

Combining the intelligence of an action movie with the excitement of an art-house release makes Mongol as dry as summer in the Gobi Desert.

Mongol, from its thrilling battles to its intimate romance, has the look, scale, story and feel of an old-fashioned epic in the best and biggest sense of the word.

Even if you can't completely follow the plot, you also can't take your eyes off the scenery, the thrilling horse chases and the throat-slashing battles.

When we think of the fearsome Genghis Khan, we don't picture him as ever having been a little boy. But he must have been, and that is where this grand throwback to the sweeping historical epics of yesteryear takes up the Great Khan's story.

As an epic action movie, Mongol is satisfying enough. Think Braveheart. Think 300. Just don't think too much.

This is a historical epic like Mom -- or David Lean -- used to make. It's got transgenerational blood feuds, galloping steeds, lucky talismans carried for years by separated lovers, and steppes -- lots and lots of steppes.

Relates the story of Genghis Khan's early years in a plodding, uninspired fashion that doesn't bode well for the next two entries in a planned trilogy.

Having Bodrov, who directed the excellent The Prisoner of the Mountains, in charge here is an advantage. Though there is only so much any director can do with characters who are next door to mythic, Bodrov can do more than most, and it helps.

A movie in which acting still prevails is Mongol. People often say, 'They don't make movies like they used to.' Maybe the Russians make movies like Hollywood used to. Mongol, photographed beautifully in Kazakhstan and the Chinese province of

This would have been one of the greatest all time epics, but there were some major gaps in the story.