Solomon Kane

Put together Van Helsing's grade-A movie budget with Solomon’s courage to cut little boys’ throats, and everyone is happy. Anyway, although this movie is amusing enough, it comes across as a farce with all its aspects borrowed from other movies. Purefoy’s performance is alright. (13/07/2010)

Klaus Badelt's soundtrack runs full throttle and Czech realities eagerly try to disguise themselves as a dark medieval period, but that's about all the praise this action-packed film will receive from me. Solomon Kane tells a cheap fairytale instead of an ambitious fantasy. It could have worked in book form, but the film is surprisingly annoyingly transparent in its execution. (07/01/2011)

An honest medieval bloodbath without any unnecessary special effects (except for the impressive ending), which relies on rain, mud, and blood, and the result is an uncompromising impact, perhaps marred by the slightly predictable plot. However, this time it doesn't matter so much because the main trump card of Bassett's film is James Purefoy. Anyone who has ever watched Rome knows that he is a charismatic bastard, and even here he lives up to his reputation. It is a pleasure to watch a protagonist who, even when uttering pathetic phrases, does not look ridiculous but instead makes the viewer's signal system shiver with a pleasant chill. Not to mention the moments when he picks up a sword (or better yet, two). Thumbs up. PS: (24/05/2010)

I’m like how badass and gritty this film is, but in terms of quality it’s average at best. Solomon Kane has pretty much all the clichés of the genre, which I don’t necessarily mind, but unlike other viewers, I don’t think it works well with them, which I do mind – it was very clear how many of the scenes would unfold, already when it shouldn’t have been so. To avoid spoilers, I will explain this with an example that has nothing to do with this film: a twist where the story is only a dream of the protagonist is a cliché. If it doesn’t occur to me that this will be the twist while watching the film, I won’t mind the cliché. But if it is clear after ten minutes, that’s bad. In Solomon Kane, unfortunately, almost everything is clear from the start. On top of that, it’s often too serious for me to take seriously. 5/10 (28/06/2010)

By the time I finished watching Solomon Kane, I was practically convinced that the director Basset must be the same guy who made Frontier(s). Exactly the right set of effectively (and well) composed shots that ultimately don't hold together very well. Most of the scenes are at least a minute longer than they should be and the fights, for example, look pretty amateurish. There was also a fair amount of digital effects sporadically, but I forgive the heavily criticized final monster because it was really cute in its Heroes of Might and Magic style. Likewise the creatures in the mirrors at the beginning (although it was a mega-useless scene). I wrestled with the backdrops that were just backdrops, but I think the main character was what pissed me off the most. I mean, the introduction to the character at the beginning was awesome, and I loved the cynical guy. Why he then had to turn into a whiny sock puppet during the course of the film, who I wanted to slap from time to time and yell at him to man up and go do something, is a mystery to me, because I don't imagine the target audience wanted that. But on the plus side: it's finally a fantasy, a FANTASY! Not a medieval fantasy with fantasy elements, an ancient loosely interpreted legend, or a comic book adaptation – it's fantasy. All the witches, spells, monsters, and the like are not dispensed with God knows what kind of wit, and I enjoyed it. In its light artlessness it made me feel like it was really being made by fans and not producers, and I loved the spectacular props like the bloody throne, the inquisitor masks, and Jason Flemyng as the heavily styled bad guy. It's fun and I'm glad they make movies like this, but if only Snyder.... (29/09/2011)