Slow moving, and when it does moves along, it seems to leave out crucial information at times. Not sure if it was Mongolian habit 800 years ago, but half the killings are because of a woman, and half are to revenge one man's brother. Only in the final battle is it for power. One gets a sense of deja vu afterwards with him being captured so many times and all under very similar circumstances.

After about half an hour I stopped wondering when the film would actually start. I remembered it just before the end. As end titles rolled, I wondered: How come the film never even began? You see, the entire film feels like back story to events that will be the focus of the film. Unfortunately that is all we ever get. Scenes are disjointed, we are never explained why these scenes matter, and we have no clue where the story is going. These are episodes that don't even create a story. Most of the time I had no idea why the filmmakers thought that particular scenes should even be in the film or why they should be abandoned abruptly. Until the very end I h ad no idea what I was watching or where it was all going.This is a very bad piece of cinema. It is not engaging, it is extremely confusing, and ultimately it does not manage to tell a story - even a boring one. And boring it is.

Genghis Khan: The Biography this movie is not, and how could it be? Much of the history of the warlords young life is wrapped in legend and convenient events. Because the trilogy that this film was meant to be the first part of never saw the light of day - director Bodrov first lost interest, then wanted to make only a second part, and eventually nothing came of it - I can forgive the mostly uncritical take on this man who would grow up to be one of history's most murderous tyrants.But it would have been interesting to see where this all came from. The film hints at his desire to unite the Mongols, to give them 'simple laws'. But as we all know, there are no Mongols in Baghdad or Kiev, great cities of the age that were all but destroyed by Mongol invaders. Their inhabitants were killed or enslaved - and for what? At one point in the film it is said that all Mongols do is 'steal and kill'. So it seems: half a millennium after the Romans of Constantinopolis built the wondrous Hagia Sophia, the Mongols came up with the 'simple law' that betraying your Khan was a capital offense. That might be revolutionary on the steppes, but its not very impressive in the larger scheme of things.As such, the movie is barely more than an interesting adventure on the steppes of central Asia. There's the determined, strong and divinely favoured hero and his faithful, strong-willed and beautiful wife, the friend-turned-enemy, the small skirmish, the big battle. It's all rather formulaic, but it works well enough - and the steppes themselves are nothing short of impressive. There are some fantastic landscape shots in this film.So despite its dubious history, its uncritical approach to this much-hated historic figure, and the unoriginal storytelling, I still found myself entertained throughout the films two hour duration.

The Historical Epic is a disappearing staple from Hollywood, but many of them are still made in other parts of the world where it is probably a good deal cheaper to do so--Mongol is a perfect example, a grand, sweeping biographical tale about the development of a leader--this time set in Mongolia in the 12th Century.The scenery in Mongol is incredibly varied and beautiful and the battle scenes, when they come, are stark and brutal, but the main focus here is the development of the main character from childhood to maturity.Tadanobu Asano captures the quiet tenacity of a young man whose loyalties are to a way of life he chooses to defend: he picks out a wife when he is 9 years old (she later claims she chose him), and remains faithful to his idea of family and home no matter what the exterior challenges--it's a humane film about a violent time, charged with mythic resonance and incredible scope.