Starring Karl Urban, Russell Means, Clancy Brown, Moon Bloodgood,Ralf Moeller
Written By: Laeta Kalogridis
Directed By: Marcus Nispel
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Buy on Amazon.com link

Pathfinder looked interesting to me but like with a lot of movies these days, I just didn’t feel like spending money on a movie that would potentially suck ass. I think if the movie had a bigger star, and re-done a few things; it could have been a great film.

Pathfinder is about a young Norse boy whose Viking ship lands in the New World. Everyone on the ship is dead except him. A Native American woman finds him and the tribe agrees not to kill him. 15 years go by, and Ghost is trying to become one of the men in the tribe. He has to prove himself to the tribe, and prove something to himself as well. One day as he’s hunting with a little girl, the Vikings show up and start wrecking havoc on Ghost’s village. The Vikings are huge beastly men, who seem to be part animal since they make lots of animal noises. Or maybe that’s just unnecessary sound effects. Yeah its probably the later. Ghost goes back to the village and sees that most of people are dead, including children and women. He gets pissed off and plots revenge against the Vikings before they kill more Native Americans.

Visually, Pathfinder looked really cool. It was dark and grim & had some beautiful stylistic shots as well. It might have been the uncut version of the movie, but I felt this movie was pretty gory at times. Heads go flying, arms get chopped off, and people get drawn and quartered. Fun stuff! One big problem I have with this movie is how the Native Americans are portrayed. I’m sure people feel the same way for the vikings but since I have some Native American heritage, I kind of feel I need to stick up for them. To me, they just seem useless and quite retarded in the movie. I’m really surprised Russell Means, who’s an AIM (American Indian Movement) activist even agreed to do this movie. It’s kind of funny to hear all the Native Americans speak with perfect English accents. All the vikings get subtitles, why not just make the film a subtitle movie. There isn’t a lot of speaking going on in the movie anyway. I’m kind of glad there wasn’t much dialogue, because it didn’t really need it. I thought the action was good but the story and the pacing was off. The story isn’t really original, and we’ve seen a white guy living with Native Americans plenty of times, we just didn’t get to see Karl Urban dancing with any wolves in this film. I think the ending went on too long. Just when you thought it was going to finally be over, the Vikings would realize what was going on and they continued on. It was cool to see Ghost outsmart them but it just got tiresome after awhile. You almost feel like screaming at the TV, “just kill them already!”

The Pathfinder: Uncut Edition DVD has a few extras on it. The deleted scenes didn’t really offer anything special. They just seemed like extended shots, or shots that just featured characters that weren’t in the movie long. The featurettes were all right, and they were broken up into sections like design, stunts, shooting, etc. There’s where you’ll find out about all the stuff that happened in pre-production, production, and post-production. Other things on the DVD’s special features include audio commentary and some trailers.

Pathfinder reminds me of those classic 80’s fantasy films like Beastmaster, Conan the Barbarbian but this time it’s done with Vikings and Indians. Is the movie any good? It has it’s moments and it looks really cool, but I think the movie is very flawed as well. It’s definitely something to watch on a rainy weekend.

Features:
Commentary
Deleted Scenes
Featurettes
Trailers

Audio:
ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1
ENGLISH: DTS 5.1
SPANISH: Dolby Digital Surroun
FRENCH: Dolby Digital Surround

Video:
Widescreen 2.40:1 Color

Subtitles:
English, Spanish

Favorite Scenes: I liked the scenes where Ghost was kicking the Vikings ass. The scene on the ice was cool too.
Rating: NR
Running Time: 106 minutes
Extras Rating:
Overall Rating: