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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
I don't know the Mongolian word for panache, but Mongol's got plenty of it. The battle scenes are as notable for their clarity as their intensity; we can follow the strategies, get a sense of who's losing and who's winning.
Even if you can't completely follow the plot, you also can't take your eyes off the scenery, the thrilling horse chases and the throat-slashing battles.
This is a historical epic like Mom -- or David Lean -- used to make. It's got transgenerational blood feuds, galloping steeds, lucky talismans carried for years by separated lovers, and steppes -- lots and lots of steppes.
Bold, epic battle-happy movie that humanizes the world-conqueror and gives him plenty to be aggressive about.
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.
The founder of history's greatest contiguous empire gets an appropriately bravehearted movie, an exciting actioner from Russian director Sergei Bodrov.
Having Bodrov, who directed the excellent The Prisoner of the Mountains, in charge here is an advantage. Though there is only so much any director can do with characters who are next door to mythic, Bodrov can do more than most, and it helps.
Top CriticI'd rather have seen the sequel.
Mongol, for all the intense action and warfare, is also a character study of a great leader and strategist.
As an epic action movie, Mongol is satisfying enough. Think Braveheart. Think 300. Just don't think too much.
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.
Russian filmmaker Sergei Bodrov contrasts images of sweeping landscape and propulsive battle with potent scenes of emotional intimacy in Mongol, his quite grand, quite exotic, David Lean-style epic.
If you like your epics sweeping and bloody and real, Mongol may be the best you get for a long while.
Lacking 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
[It's] as good as most of this year's American would-be blockbusters, but it might've been far more interesting if the filmmakers had either left the Hollywood mold or embraced it with reckless abandon.
Mongol is a Far East Braveheart, charged with the same sense of pseudo-history, movie heroics and inspirational grandeur.
This revisionist history of the early life of Ghengis Khan leaves one baffled and unconvinced.
If a hero is to deserve this much spectacle, he ought to be at least a little bit interesting.
Sergei Bodrov brings back the cinematic epic of old with his revisionist view of Genghis Khan...There is no John Wayne or CGI to be seen in this Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee.
Mongol presents a Khan with a spring in his step and love in his heart. And, OK, some wrath.
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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:
Trailer & Poster review
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