Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Alicia I love this movie so much

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

paulclaassen Slow moving, and when it does moves along, it seems to leave out crucial information at times. Not sure if it was Mongolian habit 800 years ago, but half the killings are because of a woman, and half are to revenge one man's brother. Only in the final battle is it for power. One gets a sense of deja vu afterwards with him being captured so many times and all under very similar circumstances.

g-bodyl As a student of history, it would be beneath me to avoid a movie depicting the early life of perhaps the greatest Mongolian ever to inhabit this planet. Because it's not a Hollywood production, the accuracy is not questioned and the film gives a character study, not just a battle arena. However, there are just enough battles and blood to satisfy action fans. But I truly enjoyed the fact that the film points out the early Mongolians were not just blood lust, but they had a culture which incorporates religious and family aspects.Sergei Bokrov's film is about the early life of Temujin as he endured enslavement as a child and how he rises politically with a goal to unite all Mongolians as he defeat the local tribes to band them together as one.This film is well-acted for the most part. Tadanobu Asano is excellent as Genghis Khan and not only he portrays Khan as a violent man, he portrays him as a man who does have a soft side, especially when it comes to his family. However, I'm not sure what to think about the performance of Sun Honglei as Jamukha. His acting seemed to be a little over-the-top.Overall, Mongol is a fascinating film about a man people really don't know too much about. The film has good central themes regarding abduction, family, love, and leadership. The film features sweeping and gorgeous cinematography as the film was shot in some of the most beautiful locations on this planet. The action and drama intermingle with each other very well. On the whole, I was quite pleased with this film. I rate this film 8/10.

Heinz Mannberger Genghis Khan: The Biography this movie is not, and how could it be? Much of the history of the warlords young life is wrapped in legend and convenient events. Because the trilogy that this film was meant to be the first part of never saw the light of day - director Bodrov first lost interest, then wanted to make only a second part, and eventually nothing came of it - I can forgive the mostly uncritical take on this man who would grow up to be one of history's most murderous tyrants.But it would have been interesting to see where this all came from. The film hints at his desire to unite the Mongols, to give them 'simple laws'. But as we all know, there are no Mongols in Baghdad or Kiev, great cities of the age that were all but destroyed by Mongol invaders. Their inhabitants were killed or enslaved - and for what? At one point in the film it is said that all Mongols do is 'steal and kill'. So it seems: half a millennium after the Romans of Constantinopolis built the wondrous Hagia Sophia, the Mongols came up with the 'simple law' that betraying your Khan was a capital offense. That might be revolutionary on the steppes, but its not very impressive in the larger scheme of things.As such, the movie is barely more than an interesting adventure on the steppes of central Asia. There's the determined, strong and divinely favoured hero and his faithful, strong-willed and beautiful wife, the friend-turned-enemy, the small skirmish, the big battle. It's all rather formulaic, but it works well enough - and the steppes themselves are nothing short of impressive. There are some fantastic landscape shots in this film.So despite its dubious history, its uncritical approach to this much-hated historic figure, and the unoriginal storytelling, I still found myself entertained throughout the films two hour duration.

DerKill Remember the spoof play in The Producers called "Springtime for Hitler," whose absurd theme was to portray Hitler in an overly gleeful musical. The musical was absurd because most consider its happy-go-lucky subject to be the worst man of the 20th century. Mongol takes on the subject of Genghis Khan, who many consider to be the worst man in all history. He united the tribes of Mongolia and went on a rampage across Asia and Europe that puts Hitler to shame. Yet, Mongol portrays this "worst man ever" as a sensitive people-loving individual who always puts his moral sensibilities ahead of his own self-interests. In short, it's about a guy who is the opposite of Genghis Khan. Rather than the shrewd and calculating genius that we are led to believe he was in the history books, Mongol shows Genghis Khan (or Temudgin) to be a bit of a chronic loser whose bad luck or bad decisions are constantly putting him at the mercy of others. His moral clarity and lack of tact not only put him at odds with both allies and enemies in this movie, but also with the real Genghis Khan. The movie supposedly covers the early years of Temudgin up until the time that he united the tribes of Mongolia. However, very little uniting is done and most of the movie is spent with Temudgin simply surviving by himself as best he can. As a viewer, you're always wondering when he's going to turn it around and start winning. But the losing streak continues for the vast majority of this 2 hour movie until Temudgin hits rock bottom, loses everything, and is sold into Chinese slavery. Yes, Chinese slavery. Meanwhile, his wife ends up bearing children to a wealthy Chinese man. I know that there is very little written about this time in history and that the writers had considerable leeway to make up just about anything, but you have to be kidding me. The whole story seems like an elaborate stretch of the imagination designed to appease the Chinese audience by allowing them to claim that the later Mongolian rulers of China were really Chinese after all. So how does Genghis Khan go from Chinese slavery to leader of the Mongolian people? I still don't know. The movie skips that part. He gets freed by his wife, runs off by himself, and the next scene shows him several years later as leader of a large army ready to fight the final battle. No explanation is given for how this happened. That's a lost opportunity because the story of how Genghis Khan united the tribes hasn't really been told, not even in the history books. The writers had the creative freedom to come up with any engaging story about a very interesting time in history. Instead, they decided to gloss over it and focus on the "sentimental" aspects of Genghis Khan, as if there were any. I have to conclude that Mongol is a nice story about some guy that is not Genghis Khan.But if you're the type of person that can see past the implausible history and you simply want to watch an epic story with cool action scenes, you must know that the action scenes have some of the most distracting special effects that I have ever seen in a movie. They are riddled with cheesy cartoon blood splatter. Every cut from a weapon results in way too much animated blood spray. It may sound a little immature to complain about the bad special effects of the blood in a movie like this, but it really is so bad that you almost want to fast forward through the action scenes. The rule that, bad special effects are worse than no special effects, was not heeded here and you will be scratching your head thinking, "Why did they do this?" I was thinking that a lot as I watched Mongol.