SOLOMON KANE - a near perfect piece of pulp entertainment

I love the CONAN films, and pretty much all Arnold Schwarzenegger flicks from the eighties in general. But CONAN is special. There's something deliciously disturbing about a woman like me (quasi-feminist, post-modern, intellectual snob) liking something so, well, unreconstructed in its full-on appreciation for strong men swinging swords in a battle for cosmic stakes painted in simplistic terms. Good and evil are tangible in the world of Robert E. Howard. So while I didn't know much about SOLOMON KANE going into the film, I knew enough: for this is another character created by Robert E. Howard, and in true pulp stylee, the resulting film is just astoundingly, unashamedly pure in its intentions. We are going to get a straightforward battle between good and evil fought for the ultimate stakes, and it will be waged by a fit guy with a multitude of weapons.

Solomon Kane is a sixteenth century aristocrat turned rebel warrior. Like St Augustine he has lived a life of pillage and murder upon the high seas, resulting in the Devil laying claim to his soul. Kane being no hippie vegetarian, he escapes the Devil and retreats to a monastery whereupon he repents and disavows violence. With steady purpose he sets off back to the West Country to his ancestral home, but finds that it has become over-run by sorcery and evil with a capital E (good piece of paedophobia involved). His dilemma is whether to forfeit his redeemed soul and take up the sword in order to vanquish evil.

The first thing to say is that this movie looks fantastic. It's all gothic horror - misty moors, muddy fields, craggy castles on clifftops. The cast look like Puritans have turned up in the middle of Mordor, with Solomon Kane looking distinctly like Aragorn and the evil thugs rather orkish. Mackenzie Crook of THE OFFICE looks particularly superb in a frightwig as a mad old priest and James Purefoy (Mark Anthony in HBO's ROME) looks every inch the convincing warrior with a crisis of conscience. They've even wheeled out Max von Sydow as Kane's father and Jason Flemying as the sorcerer Malachai with some very fruity face-grafitti.

The second thing to say is that despite the complete insanity of the plot - witches, sorcerers, pacts with the devil etc - everyone plays it straight. There's never a whiff of pastiche and somehow, the fact the actors all invest into it, means that we do too. I mean, the stakes are absurdly high here, but I never for a minute thought "Hold up! This is RIDONKULOUS!" Rather, I was genuinely fascinated to see how it would all play out, and felt genuinely sorry for this poor bastard who renounces violence and lives in genuine fear for his immortal soul but is caught in the worst of all Catch-22s.

Basically, SOLOMON KANE is just about as perfect as you can get for sword-swinging fantasy epic entertainment. I dock it half a mark for breaking the carefully constructed veil of plausibility by inserting a truly ludicrous CGI monster into the final act. It's even more annoying that writer-director Michael J Bassett did this, because when you look at the narrative, and the choice that has to be made to drive the denouement, you don't actually need the monster at all. The key point is that Kane has to make a choice, and a sacrifice. The struggle is internal, and the struggle against external ravenous beasties is secondary. Still, despite that minor hiccup, SOLOMON KANE remains an impressive and entertaining flick. I could happily watch it again, and I'm really hoping it makes enough phat cash that they greenlight the rest of the planned trilogy.

SOLOMON KANE played Toronto 209 and opened in France, Kazakhstan and Russia last Christmas. It opened earlier this year in Spain and the Philippines and is currently on release in the UK. It opens in the Netherlands on March 18th and in South Korea on March 25th. No US release date yet.

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL - Spasticus Autisticus

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL is a fast-paced, manically inter-cut biopic of Ian Dury, New Wave singer, genius wordsmith, ladies man and radical. Born working class, crippled by polio, trained by Peter Blake, married to a middle-class portrait painter, father to two kids, living in suburbia. That's how we meet Dury - a punk radical playing shitty pubs with a dodgy band, desperate for fame, and deeply at odds with his suburban home life. Somehow his wife puts up with his shit, even when he shacks up with a pretty West Indian girl much younger than him and moves out. Somehow the Kilburn and the High Roads turn into The Blockheads, the seminal songs are written, and the money comes rolling in. Before you know it, Dury and his crew are in a swanky rented country house, generally pissing about and not getting much work done. His girlfriend and wife are both simultaneously in love and at wits end with him. His young son is much loved but exposed to drugs and not much schooling. His young daughter is basically ignored. The End.

If the plot summary above seemed to have no structure, well, neither does the film. It survives as entertainment purely on the strength, charisma and sheer bravado of Andy Serkis' (best known as Gollum) leading performance. You get a good sense of Dury as wordsmith but you don't really get how he became famous. One minute he's playing pubs, the next he's famous. You never get how his character might have changed. His girlfriend Denise (Naomie Harris) complains that fame has changed him, but the audience doesn't see it. He just seems as much of an egotistical but charming arse as ever. His wife (Olivia Williams) evolves - moves on - but Dury never changes. He's just too clever by half, too selfish by half, and a lot of fun to be around.

If you love Ian Dury's music, you'll get a kick out of this film. Serkis is genius, and ably supported by Olivia Williams and Naomie Harris. But if you don't know who Ian Dury is, this film isn't going to help. You get a lot of stuff about his early life, but it doesn't tell you about art school and how he became a radical performer. You get the starting point (the film posits that being crippled was the defining change) and the final product, but nothing inbetween. You don't have a clue why he's married to an RA.

So, all in all, this is a great little film that could've done with a bit more substance, and a bit more exposition, a little more context.... As it is, it's unlikely to get an audience beyond the core fanbase. Still, anything that makes you dust off your old vinyl, it's no bad things.

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL is on release in the UK.