Surrender to its exotic oddity and guttural throat-singing and you’ll be entertained by a sweeping saga that’s like a Mongolian Braveheart.
Comment
06/06/08
Mongol (2008)
87
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:98
Fresh:85
Rotten:13
Average Rating:7.1/10
Consensus: The sweeping Mongol mixes romance, family drama, and enough flesh-ripping battle scenes to make sense of Ghenghis Khan's legendary stature.
Theatrical Release:06-06-2008
Synopsis: Award-winning Russian filmmaker Sergei Bodrov (Prisoner of the Mountains) illuminates the life and legend of Genghis Khan in his stunning historical epic, Mongol. Based on leading scholarly... [More]
Starring: Tadanobu Asano, Honglei Sun, Khulan Chuluun, Odnyam Odsuren
Director: Sergei Bodrov
Reviews for Mongol
A beautiful and ambitious film flawed by its dogged determination to cast Genghis Khan in a new light, the best that can be hoped is that Mongol provides a stage for better things in the forthcoming films.
06/06/08
Top CriticA gracefully mounted, stunningly photographed historical account, fascinating in its attention to detail if somewhat unengaging in its story and characters.
06/05/08
Top CriticWith its breathtaking landscapes, bloody battles, bitter betrayals and an aching love story, Mongol is a sumptuously crafted epic
06/05/08
Top CriticLacking great themes and inner depth, Mongol is just another galloping wondershow of ice blue skies and rocky plains, a light diversion with delusions of grandeur
06/06/08
This would have been one of the greatest all time epics, but there were some major gaps in the story.
10/17/08
This revisionist history of the early life of Ghengis Khan leaves one baffled and unconvinced.
06/06/08
I'd rather have seen the sequel.
06/06/08
For a motion picture about man who changed the world on his own terms, one would think his life story would be a riveting experience, not something that requires a pot of coffee and occasional magazine breaks to enjoy.
06/05/08
Relates the story of Genghis Khan's early years in a plodding, uninspired fashion that doesn't bode well for the next two entries in a planned trilogy.
06/10/08
Top CriticIf a hero is to deserve this much spectacle, he ought to be at least a little bit interesting.
06/05/08
While fur-clad pillaging sounds fun enough, a Crouching Tiger–style ponderousness hollows out this largely Russian-produced dud.
06/05/08
Combining the intelligence of an action movie with the excitement of an art-house release makes Mongol as dry as summer in the Gobi Desert.
06/06/08
Asano's Khan is a hero in the classic mold, and the portrayal is riveting. Not entirely so the film, however, which concludes with a lengthy endnote as though it were Steppe Wars IV: A New Hope and Equal Plunder for All Men.
06/20/08
It must have been a pretty weak year for subtitled fare if the Oscar voters sought to praise this inert, inept epic.
07/05/08
More impressed with its own olden days ready-to-rumble, flesh-ripping Far Eastern beatdowns, than fleshing out with any depth just who these characters were and how they struggled to exist back then. History as a scenic but dramatically sparse travelogue.
05/26/08
Give Mongol’s makers credit for taking advantage of the spectacular scenery and creating an almost documentary reality regarding life among Mongolia’s nomads. But as storytelling the film goes nowhere slowly.
06/20/08
Mongol is a big, ponderous epic, its beautifully composed landscape shots punctuated by thundering hooves and bloody, slow-motion battle sequences.
06/05/08
Top CriticJapanese indie idol Asano smolders as maverick Temudgin [Khan].
09/19/07
Top CriticA thoroughly rousing hunk of celluloid, a war saga that blends the sturdiest conventions of old-fashioned heroic storytelling with a few pixilated battle enhancements — check out the soaring blood globs — of the kind that spattered across 300.
06/27/08
Latest News for Mongol
January 08, 2009:
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October 22, 2008:
More impressed with its own olden days ready-to-rumble, flesh-ripping Far Eastern beatdowns, than fleshing out with any depth just who these characters were and how they struggled to exist back then. History as a scenic but dramatically sparse travelogue. 
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March 30, 2008:
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