John's Movie Musings

How much do you know about Genghis Khan? From what I remember of my history classes, he was a ruthless Mongolian who conquered most of Asia. Mongol is a film out of Russia that tells his story... the first part anyway.

You see, Mongol is the first film in a trilogy of the khan's life. It starts way back when Genghis was just a little nine year old mongoloid. One day, he and his father were having a Mongolian BBQ with their enemies when his dad gets poisoned. Thus sets little Genghis on his Blues Brothers-like journey to get the clans back together.

Mongol reminded me a lot of Braveheart mixed with a good Western. There were lots of good father - son moments and the love story brought back memories of Scotland. Wait. A love story? Yeah. Mongol paints a completely different picture of Genghis Khan than what you may have. To be fair, it is only the first movie, so the man has a few more hours to get ruthless.

That all said, the movie is awesome. The cinematography is so good, I now want to visit Mongolia. And the director didn't use a lot of CG work. According to IMDB, he actually imported 1500 horses for the battle scenes. And it all looks violently fantastic.

Mongol lost the Oscar this year to La Vie en Rose. I haven't seen that one yet, but Mongol definitely deserved the nomination. Check this one out for sure.

Grade: A