10,000 B.C.

Mar 19, 2008
By Tim Oscher

Director: Roland Emmerich
 
The poster for “10,000 B.C.” says it all: a lone hunter is shown squatting at the very edge of a narrow ledge, pointing his spear at a vastly oversized sabre tooth tiger. But there is no such scene in the movie. I might even go further: there is no such movie.

“10,000 B.C.” is so execrable, on so many levels, that it truly baffles me how it could have been made in the first place. The fact that it was simultaneously released on the same day in 25 countries shows that the studio bosses knew full well how awful the film was and wanted to cash in quickly before the rapid spread of inevitable bad reviews.
The film begins with a horribly cheesy voice over from Omar Shariff as the camera swoops over a snowy mountain range before settling on a cozy-looking village of pre-historic hunters.
The villagers survive thanks to their men folk’s skill at hunting mammoths, but one day the village gets raided, and several of its members are whisked away to become slaves.

D’Leh (Steven Strait) goes off with a small group to try and rescue the pillaged villagers, as his beloved Evolet (Camilla Belle) is among them. The rescue party walks for a few days until they arrive in some sort of tropical jungle. There they get attacked by a giant bird, which looks not unlike an ostrich.
A few days later they’re in a desert. There they hook up with various African tribes and press on until they get to the pyramids. Yes, the pyramids are being built with plenty of slave labour and mammoth-power.
To say that “10,000 B.C.” is historically inaccurate is pointless. I believe that a director can take whatever historic liberties they wish with their subject matter, so long as the result is either entertaining or intellectually challenging.

“10,000 B.C.” is neither. It is just shockingly, inexcusably bad. If it were a carton of milk, it would be sour. If it were a piece of meat, it would be swarming with maggots. If it were any item of quantifiable quality, it would be pushed aside as defective.
What really infuriates me is it will still probably make a profit. I can only hope that director Roland Emerrich is haunted by irate sabre tooth tigers and indignant woolly mammoths in his dreams. 

Opens March 21 in Estonia. Now showing in Latvia and Lithuania

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