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10,000 BC
Jeri Jacquin, MOVIE MAVEN
In theatres this Friday is a film from director Robert Emmerich who brought us “Independence Day” and “Day After Tomorrow”. It is a trip back into the land that time forgot with “10,000 BC”.
This is the story of a prophecy and it goes something like this. D’leh (Steven Strait), a young Yagahl mammoth hunter has been in love with Evolet (Camilla Belle), a strange blue-eyed girl from another clan, since they found her as a child. Now both grown, in order to claim the tribal white spear and Evolet he must be the one to bring down a mammoth.
But D’leh is an outsider since the tribe believes his father abandoned them so he must prove himself. When the Old Mother (Mona Hammond) tells the tribe that things are going to change for the worse, outsiders come and take prisoners, including Evolet. It is D’leh that must save what is left of his tribe and rescue her.
To do this D’leh must cross lands he never knew existed. He finds help in his friend Tic Tic (Cliff Curtis) and comes to rely on the help of all the different tribes he finds. He leads them to a grand city where slaves are used as D’leh calls upon them all to rise up and free themselves. But D’leh must do all of this before time runs out for Evolet.
FINAL WORD: Well, if your looking for historically accurate detail in the film you will not be happy. There is a lot of head scratching going on here with who these hunters are and where they are from. But before you can grasp that there are African tribesmen and right after that - the “others” (never really sure who they were). Where are there mountains only a few days walk to Egypt? Was that Egypt? I actually think the people of the ‘almighty one’ were meant to be aliens but that could just be me.
I felt like I was watching “Conan the Barbarian”, “Apocolypto”, “Clan of the Cave Bear”, “The Matrix” (you’ll see) and “Stargate” all in the same movie. More questions I have are why did the clan all have horrible English accents? Why were the other tribes doing wall paintings but not the people who actually were suppose to be doing wall paintings? Is it me or did the Old Woman look a lot like the scary witch from “The 13th Warrior”? Oh well, perhaps the film was just asking way to much of me to be believable, so let us delve into the effects shall we?
What’s with the mammoths? They must have had colds not to smell the hunters crawling all around them. The leader mammoth of course who was justified in his hostilities being herded like very large angry buffalo, but where did they go once herded? Its like they disappeared! (how ironically historical I’d say) What was with that saber tooth tiger? What was with the ‘alien almighty’ with the long neck and weird eyes? What was with the guy hidden in the dirt of the slaves quarters? A pictograph on a rock makes the hunter “the one”? Wow, it takes so little to make a hero these days.
The highlight of this film is the wonderful narration by Omar Sharif. I have adored him since “Lawrence of Arabia”, “Funny Girl”, “The 13th Warrior” and “Hildalgo”. There is something timeless about him with a voice that is truly recognizable.
Okay, you have homework, figure this movie out and get back to me and we’ll chat – unless you take to long to figure it out and I forget all about the film which is totally possible…hurry my young intelligentsia hurry!
TUBS OF POPCORN: I give “10,000 BC” two tubs of popcorn out of five. Well, the trailer was interesting at least, and pretty much covers everything. Come on people, I expected more and got speared. The story was old, the events slow, the ending predictable. The film went from being clear to grainy to clear again, not sure what that was about actually.
Alright, I’ll give you this much, it was fun to watch if you have comic relief sitting next to you ad-libbing during the film. The tagline is ‘journey into a world lost in time’ who do I journey to see about getting my lost two hours back! | 
