# Solomon Kane - The film



## Mike (Sep 11, 2009)

Well, the first Solomon Kane story appeared in _Weird Tales_ back in 1928, and the dour puritan has finally gotten himself a movie. 

http://www.solomonkane.com/

I'm excited. Comparisons to LOTR and other fantasy films of the last decade be damned, this seems to be a glorious return to the old-style Sword & Sorcery film I've been waiting for.


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## Mike (Sep 14, 2009)

Bumping this for an early review out of the Toronto International Film Festival:



> Mounting any sort of "medieval" action epic must be a really daunting task. First off, it's a period piece (obviously), which means you have to buy a lot of swords, costumes, and horses. Then you face the problem that plagued flicks as varied as The 13th Warrior, In the Name of the King, Pathfinder, Outlander, etc, and that problem is this: Laughability. By that I mean it's really easy to look silly in this sub-genre if you're not firing on all cylinders. I do not offer this early set-up to imply that Michael J. Bassett's Solomon Kane is the second coming of John Boorman's Excalibur (clearly it is not), but merely to indicate that ... holy moley, this movie is a whole lot more "polished" than one has any right to expect from a medieval action flick. Let alone one that's also got one foot planted firmly in the world of crazy occult-style horror.
> 
> Based on the stories of the now-legendary Robert E. Howard (he also created the Conan the Barbarian character), Solomon Kane is about a horrifically nasty and bloodthirsty warlord who crosses swords with the devil's right-hand reaper and actually lives to tell the tale. Only Kane's not all that interested in telling the tale. Instead he holes up in a monastery for a year before he's asked to leave, heads out on a slightly random pilgrimage, befriends a kind-hearted family, and (of course) runs afoul of true evil yet again. Ah, but there's a hook: After defeating that unholy demon in combat, Kane has taken a solemn and unwavering vow of non-violence.
> 
> ...



SOURCE: http://www.fearnet.com/news/reviews/b16619_tiff_09_review_solomon_kane.html


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## Halasían (Feb 17, 2013)

So.... three years on... any reviews of this movie?


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## Mike (Feb 18, 2013)

I have seen it. I enjoyed it a great deal. The cinematography was excellent and the director delivered on the brutal violence he promised in the pre-film buzz. And, as always, James Purefoy was excellent.

However.

As an adaptation of the Solomon Kane stories, it was lacking (Purefoy really "gets" the title character but I'm not sure the director, who also wrote the screenplay, did), and the muddled ending could have been vastly improved with the subtraction of a certain CGI monstrosity. Still, this little film--basically an independent production--had a lot of heart to it and went out of its way to be more than a pulpy gore-fest.


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