Conan the Barbarian (2011)

2/4

Starring: Jason Momoa, Ron Perlman, Rachel Nichols, Stephen Lang, Rose McGowan

Rated R for Strong Bloody Violence, Language and Some Sexuality/Nudity

When I first heard that Marcus Nispel was going to direct another action movie, I was pissed.  After the unspeakably awful “Pathfinder,” I had a right to be, even though I have never seen the Schwarzenegger entries nor have read the stories by Conan’s creator Robert E. Howard.  Nevertheless, as a film critic, I was doomed to sit through another two hours of Nispel’s crap.  Fortunately, I can say that “Conan the Barbarian” is a significant improvement upon “Pathfinder,” although I still don’t recommend seeing it.

The story, which Nispel pays as little attention to as possible, goes something like this: there is a legendary mask that if activated, gives its wearer awesome power.  When it was destroyed, it was broken into a number of pieces, each piece going to one of the tribes that defeated its last wearer.  Now, a warlord named Khalar Zym (Lang, who is completely unrecognizable) is massacring all the tribes to gather each piece.  The last piece belongs to the tribe that counts Corin (Perlman) as one of its members.  They put up a fight, but Zym gets the missing piece.  Corin survives, but his wife doesn’t because she was given a C-section by one of the bad guys.  The boy, whom his mother names Conan (Leo Howard), is raised to be a fierce warrior by his father.  But after Zym murders him on a rampage to find a virgin from the bloodline that will make the mask work, Conan sets out for revenge.  It’s years before he runs into Zym again, and now he must protect the virgin (Nichols) from activating the mask.

From beginning to end, “Conan” feels rushed.  Even the action scenes, which seem to be the only thing that Nispel cares about, go by much too fast.  Even worse, the characters are completely undeveloped, and the story rarely makes sense.  This is for two reasons: one, Nispel rushes through them as fast as he can so he can get back to the bloodletting, and two, the grunts and growls that the testosterone-filled characters use as language are often impossible to understand.  Say what you want about Michael Bay, but at least he understood that you have to have some level of character identification in order to care about what is going on.

The acting is perfunctory.  Jason Momoa can speak the dialogue okay, but it’s more important that he can fight like a badass (a task that he is more than up to).  Stephen Lang is unrecognizable, and is much less hammy than he was in “Avatar.”  Rachel Nichols is miscast; she looks great, but she speaks the dialogue like a modern-day twenty-something, which creates a disconnect.  Ron Perlman is reliable as always, but Rose McGowan is flat in an intentionally campy role.  Either she’s badly directed, or she doesn’t go far enough over the top.

To be fair, Nispel manages to inject a certain amount of adrenaline into the action scenes, and for once, the 3D is done well.  It’s also R-rated for once, although it could have used a little more of the teen-unfriendly elements (blood, gore, sex, nudity) to liven things up.  But not even these meager pluses are enough to warrant a trip to the theater.