Solomon Kane

Yesterday I watched the movie Solomon Kane, based on the Robert E Howard character of the same name, and although it's certainly not a great work of art I liked it!

Rain, mud, leather and that hat. Yepp, sums it up nicely!

I do own the Del Rey Solomon Kane collection but I haven't got around to actually reading it yet, so I can't really say how faithful the movie is to the source material. But I really like the bleak autumn/winter setting, the copious amounts of rain and mud and how the movie is kind of scaled back. It isn't about saving the world, it's about trying to rid some god-forsaken corner of England of an evil sorcerer. It's very predictable, we've seen all of the characters before and the ending could've been better but it still manages to retain a nice gritty feeling throughout. And even though the characters might be kind of flat there are some great actors in there, like Pete Postlethwaite, James Purefoy and, of course, Max Von Sydow.

Lately I've seen a few movies that have reminded me of the Warhammer RPG a lot, and Solomon Kane is most definitely one of them. If Sherlock Holmes is the kind of whimsical hunt-cultists-in-the-Altdorf-streets-kind of Warhammerish movie and I Sell the Dead is the (even more whimsical) weird-and-fantastical-things-keep-happening-but-just-go-with-it kind of Warhammerish movie, then Solomon Kane is the gritty trudge-through-the-mud-to-try-and-stop-the-marauders-from-killraping-your-home-village kind of Warhammerish movie. It's like a nice pallet showing the different colours of the Warhammer world!

Again, don't expect a great work of art, but I think it's a nice dark fantasy movie with good production values and quite a few beatiful vistas. It's an origin story with a lot of room for expansion, but because of the seemingly botched launch of the movie I wonder if it'll make enough money to get a sequal underway. It irks me that complete drivel like the Resident Evil or AvP movies keep getting sequal after sequal, whereas movies like Solomon Kane most likely won't. I mean, as long as you're making B-movies can't you at least not make the really bad ones?!

Anyway, check it out if you like dark sword and sorcery, ghouls, dismemberment, puritans in distress and/or mud! Now, here's a trailer:

Oh, and I really like the concept of mirrors being magical instruments that can be used as portals to other realms. More mirrors!