Conan the Barbarian

He’s big, he’s cut, he’s pissed, and he slays every bad guy he faces. Yeah, he’s Conan. What are you going to do about it?

He doesn’t speak very well, of course, and he has only two expressions: the scowl, and the intense scowl. These don’t serve him very well in the one love scene, but maybe he was sore from all the fighting and just couldn't stop scowling.

His skill with words is a little worse than his facial expression range and will leave you wondering if Schwarzenegger could possibly have been this bad. My memory is that the Governator was actually more articulate, as impossible as that may sound, but that could be wistful recollection. Surely Jason Momoa could not be that bad?

Ron Perlman does his usual sad-eyed job of being the elder warrior, this time Conan’s single-parent dad. When you need a big man to play an old fighter, Ron’s clearly the guy to call.

The plot made about as much sense as you’d expect. First, there’s an unstoppable mask that the bad guy absolutely cannot obtain lest he become an evil god and the world fall to him. Then he gets it, less than a third of the way into the movie, and off he rides.

The voice-over that started the film resumes. Time passes. Conan grows up. The bad guy is now mega-bad, but he’s not a god yet.

It turns out the mask needs some pure blood to activate it--and to bring back the bad guy’s dead sorceress wife in the bargain. The one person with this important pure blood is, of course, the hot female monk. More slaying and a little hanky panky ensues, as Conan and the monk get their rock-bed funk on.

More plot. More slaying.

Conan the Barbarian is exactly what you'd expect it to be, the second-best genre film (after Fright Night) of the weekend, a B- flick that I still enjoyed because I walked into the theater expecting no more from it. If you do the same, you'll enjoy it, too.