10,000 B.C
Directed by Roland Emmerich
Written by Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser
Starring Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis
Release Date March 7th, 2008
Published March 6th, 2008
Director Roland Emmerich has a track record that only Uwe Boll might envy. Based on the success of his one, Will Smith aided, success, Independence Day, Emmerich has been handed massive budget followed by massive budget to make one awful movie after another. There was Mel Gibson's jingoistic yay America, faux history actioner, The Patriot. Then Emmerich assassinated the legendary cheeseball Japanese monster Godzilla. Then he made a joke of environmental science with the mind numbingly awful The Day After Tomorrow. Now Emmerich is denigrating the stone age with his Flintstones-esque 10,000 B.C. I take that back, The Flintstones has more historical integrity than anything with Roland Emmerich's name on it.
Steven Strait, the vacant eyed, model cheekboned star of The Covenant takes the lead role in 10,000 B.C as D'leh. After his father deserted the tribe to chase the hunt, D'Leh became an outcast. Raised by dad's best friend Tic'Tic (Cliff Curtis), D'Leh lived to live down his father's shame. Thus when given the chance to hunt the massive wooly mammoth he risks his life to be the one to take down the beast. Secondary to overcoming his shame is winning the hand of the fair, blue eyed, Evolet (Camilla Bell), a transplant from another tribe that was overrun by four legged demons.
Those 4 legged demons are actually another tribe; smarter and more vicious than our heroes. They have horses. This evil tribe overruns other tribes, takes the men hostage and uses them to build temples to their pagan gods. When the four legged demons come to D'Leh's camp they kill men, women and children and take as many hostages as possible. A rare few survive and escape including D'Leh and his mentor Tic'Tic. Now they must hunt the hunters and free their people so that D'Leh can reclaim his girl, she was taken hostage, and become the leader of his tribe.
That is the plot in a linear, logical sense, and it's not bad in description. Unfortunately, as executed by Roland Emmerich and his apparently amateur effects team, 10,000 B.C plays alternately like the worst of Mystery Science Theater schlock or a bad Saturday Night Live skit. A scene early in the film where D'Leh and company hunt wooly mammoths literally features scenes of actors obviously running in place in front of a green screen. Later, the masses of extras building temples for the bad guys comes off as stolen stock footage of Liz Taylor's Cleopatra.
Then there is our star Steven Strait. Anyone who saw his work in the indie music drama Undiscovered, the film best known for the acting debut of Ashlee Simpson, knows that vacant stare and empty good looks. This ex-model leads a cast of gap ad ready cavemen into battle against what can only be described as the cast of the Arabic Project Runway. The bad guys, aside from a couple of toughs who lead the human hunting party, are an effete, pageantry loving people who mince like Rip Taylor in the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade. Why? Who knows why? But they do.
In a career of really bad movies, Roland Emmerich has finally hit his career low. If he can make a movie more ludicrous and amateurish, I hope we never see it. 10,000 B.C is a brutal, mind numbing, unintentionally humorous trip back in time.
