'10,000BC'
Reviewed by Martin McGrath

There are those for whom the name Roland Emmerich strikes a chill in their heart. There are those who regard his noisy back catalogue (including Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow) as a blight upon science fiction.

I am not one of those critics. Emmerich’s previous films might have been big and stupid and noisy and brash, but they were always entertaining with a nice thread of humour and generally likeable heroes.

Despite this, not even I can defend 10,000BC – which is horrendous mess of a movie. Calling a film 10,000BC and then having it feature metal-clad warriors (copper started to be worked around 5000BC – and these guys seem to be carrying iron, which is another 5000 years in the future) riding horses (4000BC) and building pyramids (3000BC at the earliest) is the kind of red rag to the pedant’s bull that we expect from Hollywood movies. There will be those who can’t get over such crass stupidities but for most of the audience they wouldn’t matter if the film was interesting and exciting enough to carry them over the bumps.

Sadly 10,000BC is not only stupid, it is also dull.

The film starts with a northern tribe hunting mammoths, their life is suddenly disrupted by the arrival of southern raiders riding horses and wearing metal armour and carrying swords. The raiders take away slaves and D’Leh must lead a small band to try and rescue their friends. Along the way – and in remarkably short order – they cross jungle and dessert picking up a vast army of allies who have been similarly raided. Their journey leads them to a city devoted to the construction of pyramids (using domesticated mammoths), D’Leh’s chance to meet his long-lost father, and a revolution that is won via the innovative strategy of walking up to the king/alien ruler of the enemy and tossing a spear at them.

10,000BC is without redeeming features. The acting performances are wooden and it is clear that many of the cast have no better idea of what is going on than the audience, not helped by an utter lack of convincing emotion between the leading characters. And since the film offers nothing much in terms of story or emotional content, it is unforgivable that the action sequences are so poorly handled. The CGI mammoths seem a step backwards as they lumber unconvincingly across the screen and the battle sequences suffer from flash editing and badly thought out choreography.

This is exactly the kind of film that gives Hollywood and genre cinema a bad name. Twelve thousand years in the making, 10,000BC isn’t worth five minutes of your time.