I can only conclude that this film got greenlit because it was a comic book, and it leads me to the creation of Lennymogwai’s Law: if a film has an unfollowable script, impressive visuals, looks like a children’s film made for adults and you have no idea how it ever got made, it must be based on a comic book[1].

The checklist is inauspicious enough. Loner hero (James Purefoy), an environment which could be mediaeval, could be post-apocalyptic, huge amounts of blood loss, mud and fire, innocent child to be rescued, Max Von Sydow cameo (is there anything this guy won’t do for a buck? Van Wilder 3? He was in The Seventh Seal, for Christ’s sake. He was Jesus!). Magic, nasty creatures that come out of mirrors to kill your mates? Zombies? Sibling rivalry? All present and correct.

But the bit where he gets down off the cross to which he’s been nailed? I’ve only ever seen that done once (apart from the obvious): it was in a Van Damme, cough, vehicle titled Cyborg. JCVD managed to pull the nails out of the wood using the muscles in the palms of his hands (misspent youth, there, JC?). This film was better. Marginally. Our hero here only had to pull his hands through the bolts, his crucifiers having presumably run out of nails with heads on them. Lucky break, eh? Not as lucky as their failure to put any nails in his feet or take his boots off.

As bad is the bit where he escapes Death (who calls himself ‘Satan’s Reaper’ in case Death wasn’t enough of a job description) by jumping out a window? Can’t Death fly? Can’t He swim?[2] The passengers on the SS Titanic might beg to differ.

Samuel Roukin

Eamon Ryan TD

Anyway, he begins as an evil git, sacking villages and, when running them through with your already bloodied sword might have sufficed, shooting injured enemies while they’re lying in agony on the ground. A man, therefore, for whom human life is cheap and ammo cheaper. Some silly flashbacks tell us he’s a loner, thrown out of his house of many candles by the aforementioned Mr. Von Sydow, then throwing his brother off a cliff for trying to rape someone or other. His brother (Samuel Roukin), by the way, looks like he was played by Irish Green Party TD Eamon Ryan (who quit the government today during the film). My favourite piece of bad exposition is when the late, lamented Pete Postlethwaite tells him “your older brother has given you a command”. Quality stuff. Really puts you in the picture.

Our hero—I’ve forgotten his name—tries to atone for his sins by living in a monastery but gets chucked out of there for ruining the atmos by screaming in his sleep while they’re trying to say matins. He goes on a trip but eventually ends up, several swedgings and a crucifixion later, back home, where he helps his father kill himself (lucky escape for Mr. Von S) and gets on with the business of confronting the evil Malachai (cool makeup), Malachai’s mate the Phantom of the Opera and their brigade of what look to be the bastard children of Orcs and Mitchell brothers. Blah, blah, shadows from his past, blah blah, Freud, blah blah Rosebud.

Malachai, the bad guy with evil written all over his face, played by Jason Flemyng out of Lock, Stock.

The problem with this and more than a few films of the fantasy genre is that its pofaced tone allows the viewer the first bite at slagging it off for being absurd. A filmmaker like Sam Raimi, for example, anticipates the cynical viewer by admitting absurdity and doing the whole thing tongue in cheek. This film takes itself seriously, although the opening shows that perhaps they toyed with the archness of it all before going for it straight. Initially I thought this was a sort of Van Helsing thing, but all it really has in common with that is that the effects are impressive but the film is muck.

By the end there’s only one course events can take and they take it. No alarms and no surprises here, except that it got made at all. Solomon Kane. Cost: $45 million. Worldwide take as of June 2010: $13,972,383. There you go. It really is terrible shite.

[1] For the record, the Solomon Kane series was a collection of stories in Weird Tales magazine, before being remade as Marvel comics in the seventies.

[2] Doesn’t He get a capital letter for His pronoun? If God and Jesus do then Death should. I mean we can prove He exists.