Solomon Kane (2009)

Written and Directed by: Michael J. Bassett.

Solomon Kane, that's a good name, isn't it?

Anyway, before we see, later this year, whether the latest cinematic attempt at Conan manages to properly capture Robert. E. Howard¹, or whether the best "Howard" film will remain, in fact, Rambo, there is this film version of Howard's second most famous character, starring James Purefoy as the titular dour puritan.

To be honest, I was a bit trepidatious about this despite my love for a] Kane; b] Howard; and c] Purefoy². I can't stand origin stories you see. They're worst in superhero films of course; endless stuff the audience either already knows or doesn't care about before anything interesting happens. And then, if there's been a few years between films and a change of director, they have to "reboot" the bloody concept and start all over again. For heaven's sake, isn't it?. In recent years I've adopted the brilliant plan of not watching the first film of superhero franchises at all, and starting instead from Part II, but even this isn't foolproof: watching The Dark Knight, having carefully avoided Batman Begins, what do you find but that a large chunk of the three-day running time is an origin story for Two-Face...

Anyway, Solomon Kane. While we watch it, let's also consider Howard's own first tale of Solomon Kane, "Red Shadows", from the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales.

I liked it. It's easily the best cast Howard-based film yet, Purefoy is excellent as Kane, Bassett treats everything with a proper seriousness, and there are moments that brilliantly capture the spirit of Howard. (Though, perhaps unfortunately, the best of these is right at the start, a splendid evocation of Howard's proficiency, as H. P. Lovecraft put it, with "the description of vast megalithic cities of the elder world, around whose dark towers and labyrinthine nether vaults linger and aura of pre-human fear and necromancy...")

And yet...In "Red Shadows", Kane, after evil is done to an innocent girl, declares "Men shall die for this" on the second page of 26 (in the recent Gollancz Conan's Brethen edition of Howard's tales), and the story climaxes in the dark jungles of Africa. Here, we have a brilliant pre-credits sequence in Africa, then it's back to England for an origin tale, and Kane swears his oath to avenge evil done to an innocent girl after 40-odd minutes (of 100 or so).

Perhaps I'm being unfair. In one of the interviews on the DVD extras, Michael Bassett says:

I wanted to have an origins tale, which is not something that Robert Howard did in his original works. His short stories are Soloman Kane as a fully formed character and there are only hints of who he was prior to this kind of puritan avenger.

and judged by his intentions he succeeded completely, and made a fine film, with the sort of lean and efficient running time that the Dark Knight's of the world can only dream of. Is it just me though that thinks it would have been better to have started with the 'fully-formed' Kane, and had only hints of his dark past? This goes back to Rambo being an elemental force of nature rather than a "character", and something Faction Paradox creator Lawrence Miles said about how adventure fiction runs on iconography rather than characterisation, and how "the lead characters [in adventure stories] are great symbols. If you tried dissecting their psyches, they'd fall to bits in a second."

I think he's right, and that characters like Soloman Kane aren't ultimately best served by knowing their origins and the details of their (as here) traumatic childhood family experiences. A Heroic Fantasy, I think (and especially Howard's) works best not as a character piece, but as an unstoppable frenzy of action. (Which is perhaps why the best examples remain short stories from nearly a century ago, rather than modern two-hour films). Even so, I'd definately watch a sequel to this, and I really want one of those hats...


¹ The early signs aren't good, at least for me, as the bloody thing's apparently going to be in 3D, and 3D really, really makes me sustain a fury of the most vitriolic kidney.

² Whatever one thinks of Rome³, Purefoy's performance as Mark Antony was a thing of shining excellence.

³ I really liked it, to be fair...

Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

What follows was prompted by this review of Christophe Gans's film Le Pacte des Loups¹ by the writer and man Mark Blackmore. Though it's kind of a response to that, it's certainly not an attempt to disagree with anything he says there (indeed, as I said in the comments to his review, in all conscience I think most of his points are entirely valid ones), but as the inexplicable enjoyer mentioned in that piece, I'd thought I'd try (after briefly pausing to shout "Spoilers!") to explain what I liked about it...

Firstly it's because I think bits of this are best serious Sword and Sorcery film, ever. Though bits of the opening feel rather like a western, and despite my fondness for John Milius, the opening narration and initial scenes of violence are better done than in, say, Conan the Barbarian. Equally, the scenes of Fronsac's despair and violent rage after the death of Mani are many times more emotionally affecting than anything following the death of Valeria in Conan. Of course, these sorts of things aren't specific to Sword and Sorcery, but the 'mythical beast', outsider hero with exotic sidekick etc. are all present here. (Parenthetically, the other best serious Sword and Sorcery film of recent times, I think, is the fourth Rambo film. Why is it that "actual" S&S films aren't usually as good as those that are ostensibly something else? Let's leave that aside for another time...)

And secondly it's because I think bits of this are the best 18th century intrigue and swashbuckler film ever (and you have to (well you don't, in fact, but I do) admire the demented panache of Monica Bellucci's prostitute character turning out to be a Vatican spy...)

I'll certainly grant m'colleague that it's a tad long, though. (And would be even if Gans had calmed down with the slow motion. His action scenes can be followed, for heaven's sake (rare enough, in today's ludicrous nano-second-edit world to be worth remarking on) so it's not even that this is necessary....)

Finally, and brilliantly, the guy playing the Duke of Moncan is actually called Jean-Loup Wolff.

¹ Literally, "The Pate of Lupus", a subplot happily missing from the finished film. ²

² Haha! Not really, of course...

The Fat Cyberman Is Bigger Than The Houses

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Some houses (left) and a fat cyberman [actual scale]

My daughter is now, just, old enough to appreciate Doctor Who. In other words, she loves all the different monsters and aliens ("I wonder how that monster attacks?"), and the idea of the Doctor and his friends saving the day, but the actual stories themselves don't yet mean a huge amount to her.

A good example of this is the 2008 Christmas special, The Next Doctor. When we watched this again together recently, despite the good things about it (those bits that involved Dervla Kirwan mostly) I was afterwards moved to deliver a lecture about the disappointing nature of the conclusion, where the Doctor, faced with a, well, rather odd sort of Cyberman plan, sorts things out with a magic wand. I'd barely even got into my stride when I was cut down by my daughter's observation: "Yes, Daddy, but the fat cyberman was bigger than the houses!"

She meant this as a compliment, of course, rather than to bemoan the way the CGI excesses and general bombastery can get in the way of actual good drama and stuff, but, especially perhaps with a Christmas special, who's to say she's wrong? Doctor Who plays to a vast stadium, not just the geeks in the front few rows now (as I think Paul Cornell once said, more or less) and whenever ageing fanboys like me say something about the new series that starts, "Yes, but hang on..." the young kids of today will riposte, "But the fat cyberman was bigger than the houses!" and crush us.

Still, as a friend of mine pointed out to me, this is actually a very useful phrase when it comes to describing something whose position on the quality spectrum may lie somewhere between meh and actively poor, but which, nevertheless, does at least deliver exactly what it says on the tin.

For example, the next time you're asked what you thought of Transformers 2, you can just say, "Well, the fat cyberman was bigger than the houses..."