Movie Review - Pathfinder
User Rating:
(2 votes, average: 3 out of 4)
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2007 / 99 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz
According to many sources, the movie “Pathfinder” was completed over a year ago and has been sitting on a studio shelf ever since. Well, it should have stayed on the shelf even longer. It’s tragic that we live in a world where the missing footage from Orson Welles’s “The Magnificent Ambersons” has never been found but wherein someone apparently found this piece of Viking-related shit, dusted it off and decided it warranted a national release.
I don’t often bother rating shitty movies anymore. Ben, Jones and I have a tradition called “Shitty Movie Night” where we rent the worst-looking movies on Movie Gallery’s shelves and proceed to mock them within the confines of our own homes. Thus, I see far more shitty movies than anyone should and most of them are not worth the effort of writing about. Generally, I want to forget that I’ve seen these cinematic atrocities as quickly as possible. Writing a review of them would only retard that process. But when a movie this shitty fools me into blowing eight-seventy-five on it, well, that’s another matter. I feel it’s my sacred duty as an amateur film critic to keep others from suffering the same fate as I have.
When I first saw the trailer to “Pathfinder”, well over a year ago, I was intrigued. Judging by the trailer, it looked like bloody, Viking fun. There just aren’t any Viking movies being made in this day and age, and it’s an interesting portion of history that’s just ripe for cinematic exploration. I mean, there are dozens of movies about horny college kids and their shenanigans but no movies about Vikings? That seems wrong somehow. Perhaps the grosses on “300” will change that, leading the studio execs to mine other ancient scenarios for modern, kickass, potential blockbusters. Perhaps then someone will finally make a Viking movie that doesn’t suck, just as someone several years ago had the insight to make a modern pirate movie that didn’t suck (“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl”) only to quickly realize that pirate movies are supposed to suck and therefore rectify their mistake (with “Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest). But for now, all we have is “Pathfinder” and a dream.
“Pathfinder” is the story of a young Viking boy who is inexplicably the sole survivor of a Viking shipwreck. Right here, things get stupid: the ship appears to be in a river and while the other Vikings appear to have been dead for months, the kid looks fine. How did he survive? Why doesn’t he have a scratch on him? And what, pray tell, has he been eating? Anyway, a kindly Native American woman (are we still supposed to call them that?) takes the white kid under her wing and takes him back to her tribe. If you’ve ever seen a movie you will know that the tribe will regard this child as some kind of demon or ill omen but that she and a respected member of the tribe will defend the kid, hence he will grow to manhood yet will still be seen as an outsider. As a man, the pathfinder of a nearby tribe tells him that he must “confront his past” before he can become a full member of the tribe. Lo and behold, mere moments after this suggestion, Vikings arrive to fuck shit up. The white man (called “Ghost” by the tribe and played by Karl Urban, if anyone cares) arrives too late to save anyone in his village, so they are killed, I guess, though the editing is too incoherent to tell until the film slows down long enough to show us a ditch full of bodies. Ghost then goes on the warpath…or something. There’s an action sequence where he rides a Viking shield down a snowy mountain with several Vikings in hot pursuit, another where he pulls a Rambo and pops out of bushes and ponds to kill unsuspecting Vikings, and another where he fights a bear or something. Seriously, it’s not even possible to edit a film worse than “Pathfinder” has been edited. I dare someone to do so. Even Michael Bay probably watched this movie and wondered what the hell was going on. Speaking of Michael Bay, “Pathfinder” was directed by Bay protégé Marcus Nispel, the guy who made that allegedly godawful “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” remake. This is something I’d liked to have known before I spent eight-seventy-five to see this piece of shit.
Editing isn’t the film’s only problem. Oh no. It’s got bushels of them. I don’t care about historical accuracy in a film like this, but if I did, I’m sure I’d have plenty to bitch about. If Vikings were still around, I’m sure they’d be picketing this movie. It portrays them as burly, unwashed killing machines with a penchant for fur and grisly murder. (That’s grisly murder, not Grizzly murder. I know the film has a bear in it, I thought I’d alleviate any potential confusion.) According to the subtitles they are killing the Native Americans so they can have the land all to themselves. Seems like a pretty flimsy excuse (though, I guess it worked for our founding fathers).Hell, maybe the Minnesota Vikings should picket this movie. Somebody should, because it’s pretty terrible.
The Native Americans in this film are pretty ineffectual. Maybe they should protest. For one thing, the movie has them speaking English (a couple hundred years before an Englishman set foot on their shores). For another, it portrays them as completely ineffectual warriors. Their attempts to fight back against their burly, furry, Viking oppressors are pretty weak. Their arrows have no effect against the Viking armor (even though the Vikings are barely wearing any, they’re just covered in dense fur, and considering the Native Americans usually kill fur-bearing animals with these arrows, fur shouldn’t be much of a problem). The ewoks in “Return of the Jedi” fought back much, much more effectively. It isn’t until a white man with a sword intervenes that any of the Vikings die. Yes, once again a proud minority is saved by one, single white man. Aren’t white people great? Hurray! Oh, wait, the bad guys ARE white people. Well, never mind. And even then, it appears that the Vikings were able to cram a nearly endless supply of warriors onto three measly ships, because even though “Ghost” kills quite a few of them, their numbers never seem to dwindle. Apparently the Vikings were unstoppable in reality, because “Ghost” must use the power of spring thaw and jewelry removal to eventually stop them once and for all.
I probably don’t have to say that none of the actors do themselves any favors in this movie. Clancy Brown, Karl Urban (who seems to possess no charisma whatsoever) and Russell Means are probably gonna leave this one off their resume. And I probably don’t have to tell you that the style of filmmaking leaves a lot to be desired. Aside from the terrible editing, the lighting is awful, and the vicious violence is more icky than exciting. I don’t know whose idea of fun it is to watch one of the film’s few sympathetic characters be gruesomely drawn and quartered, but I’m pretty certain that I don’t want to meet them. The scenery is nice and all, but Nispel and his team are so inept that they just show us the same shot of the same mountainside about eighty times. They also treat us to recurring shots of a crow cawing in the snow. Why? What could this possibly signify? Beats the hell out of me.
In short, don’t see “Pathfinder”. Most of you haven’t, and I applaud you, but for the few of you out there that might be contemplating it…don’t. Just…don’t.
However, when this hits DVD (probably two weeks from now) it’s an excellent candidate for Shitty Movie Night. It might be awful, but it’s infinite fun to mock. My friend and I could hardly contain our laughter in the theater.
[tags]Pathfinder, Shitty Movie Night, Karl Urban, Vikings, Historical Accuracy, Native Americans, Return of the Jedi, Movie Review, Dale Nauertz[/tags]
