Review of “10,000 BC”
It is 10,000 B.C., and the last great round of climate change is about to kick in. Dinner (that’s mammoth) is getting pretty thin on the ground. Young tribal hunter D’Leh (Steven Strait from The Covenant and Sky High) has just made a vow to his young love, the blue-eyed Evolet (Camilla Belle), to love and protect her always. As the tribal witch predicts, a group of wandering thugs destroy their camp and take a number of the tribe, including Evolet, for sale to the slave trade.
D’Leh leads a rescue party, along with his uncle Tic Tic (Cliff Curtis from Once Were Warriors), who wander on an Odyssey through mountain and desert, building a small army along the way, until they reach Giza where their captured kin are labour for the great pyramids. Despite overwhelming odds, D’Leh and Evolet have a role to play in the future of civilisation.
10,000 B.C. is a Roland Emmerich film, he of Stargate, Independence Day, and The Day After Tomorrow, and so there are a number of things you can predict about this film in advance – like great special effects over a wafer-thin plot. And, of course, he delivers exactly that. The special effects are amazing - mammoth stampedes, a sabre-tooth tiger, sweeping aerial shots of the construction of the pyramids – all technically brilliant, and definitely worth the price of admission to enjoy up on the big screen, but there are no jaw-dropping scenes, a la Day After Tomorrow’s New-York-gets-engulfed-by-a-tidal-wave. Shot in New Zealand, Cape Town, and Namibia, the real-life stuff is beautiful to look at, although a few scenes early on look exactly like a sound stage with pot plants in front of a painted backdrop.
Hair and make-up are equally patchy. With tasteful dreadlocks and artful splatterings of mud, the cast look more like they’ve dressed up to go to the Canberra Folk Festival, than they’re actually from 10,000 B.C. The production team obviously didn’t want reality to get in the way of sex appeal. Steven Straight’s brilliantine teeth look completely incongruous when you consider his character’s diet and epic and dangerous journey. But then, if you wanted to pick the film apart for factual errors, it’d be hard to know where to stop. The film borrows from any number of earlier films – Clan of the Cave Bear, Apocalypto, Jurassic Park, and once we get to Egypt, Emmerich even plagiarises himself and Stargate, but despite lacking an inventive narrative, it nevertheless holds tension quite well all the way through.
Emmerich has created a solid Boys Own Adventure which, judging from the all-male audience at my session on Thursday, should appeal to the young male demographic.
CK
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