Perhaps "most historically accurate" film was too much. Upon further review and a slight bit of reading, it seems that some liberties were taken with the actual timeline of the film's story... but the manner in which the combat is portrayed and the period effects used in the production seem (to my uneducated eye, anyway) to be first-rate.
Still, this is one good film. The next installment is due out this year, to be called The Great Khan (in Mongolian, "Genghis Khan"). I can't wait!
See how much competition the Russians are giving the US today? This film has all the earmarks of a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster... but it is directed and produced by a Russian film company in China and Mongolia... not Burbank, CA.
Some critics have said the movie is revisionist... but we aren't talking about an historical figure that we know volumes of details about, are we? To make flattering or humanist films about Stalin or Hitler to try and put a "human face" to the evil is, in my eyes, revisionist. To try and show how a man like Temudjin (the real name of the Genghis Khan) came to be in light of the 800 years and nearly zero consistency between sources is something else entirely. Temudjin is shown as a man with a family, who loves his wife and children, but who sees a course of action in a violent society that demands greater violence to be achieved. At the climactic battle scene at the end, the director shows that Temudjin planned out an entirely new means to fight a cavalry charge against his Mongol enemies, which included the death of a portion of his own forces to a blanket artillery attack. He does this in a cold and calculating manner, not to indicate that he loved death and destruction, but that he knew what would win the day, and did what needed to be done.
I have a sneaking suspicion that much of the critical comments that point out the "revisionist" nature of the film are going to come from the same people that decry the "glorification" of violence and combat in such films as Band of Brothers and Blackhawk Down. Warfare is violent, by its very nature, and Temudjin created an empire that lasted for 200 years and covered more square miles than any other empire in human history, stretching from Europe and the Baltic all the way to the modern Vietnam... and he did this by uniting a society that was as tribal and nomadic in nature as can be defined today, with warriors and leaders that were illiterate and "barbarian" by every Western definition of the words.
This is a defining bit of film-making here, boys... I'm telling you.
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I put it in my "instant queue", and I'll catch it on my next night off. The following was the top review on Net Flix ...
"For fans of exotic foreign language epics like Ran or big budget English language films like Braveheart, Mongol is a delicious offering meant to humanize (but not glamorize) the great mythic warrior, Genghis Khan. In the west, Khan has always been portrayed as a bloodthirsty butcher who wreaks havoc on the poor unsuspecting souls of Eastern Europe... a kind of 13th century Stalin. Instead, Mongol portrays him in a better, but still critical, light and places him more in line with the greatest of European generals, from Caesar to Charlemagne to Napoleon. Mongol is part 1 of a trilogy that chronicles the life of the great Khan, and focuses on Khan's childhood and early years. The story is richly detailed as it explores the traumatic experiences that would later define his life as a conqueror. Originally known as Temudgin, the young Khan was the son of a powerful warrior and part of a loving family and regional clan. He's somewhat of a prodigy as well. He spots his bride, Borte, at the age of nine, suffers the loss of his father from poisoning, and later endures a period of imprisonment and enslavement. Borte may have been a political marriage, but there is great love between them, and she waits for him, and grows to become his greatest supporter and advisor. Their love story is sharply contrasted against the bloody and epic battles that Khan would launch to unite and modernize the Mongolian people before he turned his attention to the rest of the known world. Mongol is physically stunning, well acted, and cleverly constructed to appeal to those who enjoy in-depth storytelling, romance, and bloody epics all rolled into one. Try to see it on the big screen as well; it's a wonderful work of art. "
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