Mongol

Late in January 2009, I watched Mongol.  It was subtitled, not dubbed.

I recently saw the movie Mongol, a biography of Genghis Khan. The movie only covers his life to the time where he unites the various Mongol clans under his leadership and imposes his laws upon them. The fights are bloody, the culture is fascinating, and his wife makes for a wonderful sidekick (it is amazing the efforts she is willing to make in order to help him and likewise the way he just accepts this). The movie is a bit long and, at points, drags. Some bits of Mongol culture were quite peculiar. One character wants to kill Temujin (Genghis Khan) while he is a child but custom says you can't kill a child who isn't as tall as a wagon wheel. So, he comes to Temujin's encampment and presses the youth against the nearest wheel to see if he can lop off his head yet. "Grow faster!" he demands, upset that Temujin is still short. The Mongols were famed as horse archers but most of what is seen here is swordplay.

The historical accuracy is hard to gauge. Much of what has been handed down is legend. In many ways, the events in this movie are preposterous, which probably indicates that legend outweighed fact in screenplay. He survives certain death a bit too often. However, this movie is far and away better than the only other Genghis Khan movie I have seen, The Conquerer with John Wayne as Temujin.

There is talk that this is the first of three movies on Genghis Khan. There is a strong foundation laid in this one, so a sequel would probably work well and likely rely less on legend since the later days of Genghis are better recorded.

 

Sadly, it failed to launch the trilogy.  I would have liked to see the next chapter of this story.