# 13th Warrior, The (1999)

### reviewed by
James Sanford

Two kinds of movies wind up spending a lot of time on a studio shelf: pictures that are so offbeat or unusual they give Hollywood's marketing gurus sleepless nights, or films that are so wretched the producers are ashamed to let them out.

"The 13th Warrior" has been killing time in the vault at Touchstone Pictures for two years, and not because it's an unappreciated work of art. In fact, director John McTiernan reportedly washed his hands of the movie after run-ins with Michael Crichton, whose novel "Eaters of the Dead" was the basis for "Warrior," and seeing the finished product, there's no mystery as to why McTiernan doesn't want to be associated with it. Some cinematic fiascos at least provide a few unintentional laughs; "Warrior" is simply a mess.

It does, however, offer the sight of Antonio Banderas (in eyeliner, no less) struggling to portray an Arab soldier, which must be one of the most curious casting choices since Demi Moore played a Puritan. In the proper role, Banderas can be a superb actor, as evidenced by his films with director Pedro Almodovar, such as "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" and "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!". But since making a much ballyhooed move to America in the early 1990s, Banderas has missed more frequently than he's hit. This turkey won't help balance the scale.

The released version of "Warrior" must have been considerably shorter than what McTiernan originally intended, since the movie opens with a hasty narrated sequence explaining how our hero Ahmed (Banderas) was banished to the northlands after taking a fancy to the caliph's woman. One might also assume preview audiences were baffled by certain segments of the film since voice-overs are constantly telling us what's happening at any given time.

For example, when Ahmed's party is chased by bandits who suddenly retreat at the sight of a Viking ship, someone cries out "Look! They are going! They are leaving!" over a shot of the cowards riding away. Later, Ahmed pulls off the bearskin mask of a fallen enemy and sees a human face underneath the fur. "It's a man, it's a man, it's a man," he says, just to make sure we understand.

At the same time, the screenplay by William Wisher and Warren Lewis does a pitiful job of establishing any sort of credibility in the basic situation or of creating any characters worth paying attention to. When Ahmed and his new Norsemen pals decide to take on the "terror that has no name," a band of cannibalistic underground dwellers who are terrorizing a settlement, no one is likely to care whether or not they succeed. The good guys seem almost as uncouth and unappealing as the flesh-eaters.

The meant-to-be-rousing battles in "Warrior" are constantly sabotaged by having been shot in medium close-up (so that we can't see much of anything except torsos) with a hand-held camera that always seems to miss the real action. Though a lot of heads and limbs go flying in the course of the film, the fights are so chaotic and murky even the gore is a bore. James Sanford

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