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.
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
Top CriticWith its breathtaking landscapes, bloody battles, bitter betrayals and an aching love story, Mongol is a sumptuously crafted epic
06/05/08
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 CriticSurrender to its exotic oddity and guttural throat-singing and you’ll be entertained by a sweeping saga that’s like a Mongolian Braveheart.
06/06/08
Visually stunning, historically interesting, and very entertaining.
10/08/08
Hell has no wrath like a Khan scorned.
07/09/08
The film, a foreign-language Oscar nominee, is epic in scope, in scale, in story, in everything. It has as much action as any brain-dead Hollywood blockbuster, but Mongol also has heart and intelligence.
06/19/08
Russian director Sergei Bodrov has made a magnificent epic which evokes some of the greats of the past, including Lawrence of Arabia.
06/13/08
... Bodrov's engaging vision of Genghis Khan in several moments almost feels like the silent movie epics by the Russian cinematic pioneer Sergei Eisenstein.
07/10/08
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
The movie would be an unbearably grueling endurance test for the audience and the hero were it not for the arid beauty of the Great Steppe and the sweep of the battles, rendered with splatters of gore that lend a Jackson Pollock-like excitement to [it].
06/20/08
Mongol is a little slow at times, but you do a get a good history lesson while you get to see blood spraying and bodies flying all over the place.
06/19/08
Bodrov and Arif Aliyev wrote the film, which was one of this year's foreign-language Oscar nominees, and their account is framed as a drama of inflamed loins and intense loyalty.
06/20/08
This revisionist history of the early life of Ghengis Khan leaves one baffled and unconvinced.
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
A ferocious film, blood-soaked, pausing occasionally for passionate romance and more frequently for torture. As a visual spectacle, it is all but overwhelming, putting to shame some of the recent historical epics from Hollywood.
06/20/08
Top CriticA grandly kitschy rendering of Genghis Khan's early years, the ones revealing how a boy became a ruthless yet humane warrior, devoted family man and all-around good fellow, Mongol might as well be called Braveheart in a Yurt.
06/19/08
Mongol is a throwback to a more respectable tradition. The largeness of its scope arises naturally from the material, not the budget. The movie earns its stature.
06/06/08
Mongol is a Far East Braveheart, charged with the same sense of pseudo-history, movie heroics and inspirational grandeur.
06/06/08
Sometimes it works, sometimes it falls flat, a lot of the time it feels like it's four hours long.
04/01/08
Latest News for Mongol
January 08, 2009:
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The 14th Annual Critics' Choice Awards were given on January 8, 2009, to honor the finest achievements in 2008 filmmaking. A list of nominees follows below, with winners in bold: More...
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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June 05, 2008:
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March 30, 2008:
Trailer & Poster review
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