There’s a fixed recipe for making a sword-and-horseback fantasy these days.
Open with ominous Japanese drum-pounding and turn the amps up to 11.
Add horses bursting through a mist. Invaders wearing helmets adorned with warthog tusks.
Then make the inhuman attacking army snort like Orcs from “The Lord of the Rings” while pillaging a placid native village. Nail down your video-game tie-in, sign the sequel rights, and voila, you have a film like “Pathfinder.”
This Vikings vs. Native Americans dust-up actually has relatively artistic origins, even if the result is typical blood-letting fare. A Norwegian film from 1987, “Ofelas (Pathfinder)” won the foreign Academy Award, and western producers immediately bought the rights to a remake.
Amped with those drums and enough fake blood to float a Scandinavian war fleet, the American version of “Pathfinder” tapped young director Marcus Nispel, who had remade “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Some mixed pedigree, eh?
What we get is a Norsk-tinged “Apocalypto.” Star Karl Urban spends most of his time running through the woods or sneaking through caves, with the brutish Vikings sniffing at his moccasin-clad heels.
The legend is this: Long before Columbus or other Europeans landed in North America, Viking ships touched the northeastern shore of the U.S. and Canada. One group of invaders left behind a young boy, who was adopted by local Wampanoag Indians and raised as their own.
“You were born to the Dragon Men, but you are ours,” Urban is told, when he grows up and questions his heritage. Such is the sophistication of dialogue here, leading to observations like “Your daughter has become a woman, Pathfinder!”
Ugh. Meanwhile, those Vikings return, intent on wiping out all the Indian villages and starting their own settlement. Urban must lead the fight against his better-armed Viking fathers.
The relentless soundtrack and predictable plot might be easier to take if “Pathfinder” wasn’t so ugly. It’s shot with a grainy, gray palette, turning the majestic locations in British Columbia into a depressing mass of black forest and slushy snow banks.
The action has a few dramatic moments, and a lot of old Western cliches: The arrow-in-the-shoulder bit, the low-hanging branches during the chase bit, the sliding on a shield down a glacier bit. Go on without me!
No, seriously. Next time, go on without me. Here’s hoping “Pathfinder II” is a straight-to-video- game release.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-954-1686 or at mbooth@denverpost.com.
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“Pathfinder”
R for pervasive graphic violence|1 hour, 25 minutes|GRAPHIC NOVEL FANTASY|Directed by Marcus Nispel; written by Laeta Kalogridis; starring Karl Urban, Moon Bloodgood and Russell Means |Opens today at area theaters.
