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Random gore fest

Pathfinder (English)

Director: Marcus

Nispel

Cast: Karl Urban, Moon Bloodgood, Russell Means

Seen together, this week's new release "Pathfinder", and those two other unembarrassed gore fests, "300" and "Apocalypto" really do paint a remarkable image of the human race.

One honestly has to wonder how the human race managed to survive if all that pre-modern man ever did was rampage over other men and kill everything in sight, seemingly to no conceivable end in most cases.

Questions of historical inaccuracies aside, "Pathfinder" really isn't worth the price of a multiplex ticket, anyway you look at it.

Any sign of a plot is dispensed with summarily right at the beginning.

Instead, the film runs randomly, arbitrarily from one fight to the next, never bothering to explain why, for instance, when a whole Viking army is combing the woods for they call Ghost (Karl Urban), not one of them hears the dying screams of their comrades even as Ghost steers well clear of anything that can remotely be called stealth.

The name Ghost itself is quite accurate, considering Urban's lead is about as fleshed out as the 500-word essay that seems to have been passed off as the script.

One only wishes that scriptwriter Laeta Kalogridis had seen the idea through and renamed all the other characters Non-Entities 1 to 30.

Perhaps, the only thing that might have worked for the movie was how far it was willing to go on the gore scale. Unfortunately, "Apocalypto" came first, and let's face it.

A few other directors have the stomach for the kind of madness that comes out of Mel Gibson's head.

And so it is that director Marcus Nispel loses out on the game of chicken too, leaving nothing for the audience to look forward to.

Rakesh Mehar

Ziya Us Salam

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