(This review may contain spoilers).
Conan is one of those well-known film/book series that I don’t actually remember where I first heard about it. I have a fairly vivid memory of reading some of the books from the library, but I think I saw at least part of one of the original films first.
I saw this particular version of the film originally at the cinema, but I saw it again on television today. I felt it was a particularly good film. I liked the actor who played Conan. Some of the humour and banter in this film worked particularly well to break up the moments of violence and gore.
I did feel there was quite obviously eye candy in this film. A lot of the actors were wearing quite revealing clothing at various points. But the fighting scenes were quite well done and I felt there was a lot of nice character development going on.
It was interesting to see that there was some attempt to humanise the villain, but it didn’t work a great deal. I still really disliked him. I would have liked to see more of the daughter, though. There were a couple of moments where she showed her own personality, but I didn’t feel that she was quite as well-rounded as she could have been.
It was good to see Conan’s history and how he became the person he was. There was less of the barbarian than I was used to from the original books and from the older films, though. He wasn’t civilised, but he wasn’t quite what I would have expected.
There were some particularly effective scenes in this film. I particularly liked the sword fighting scenes and I felt that Conan’s history and how he became the person he was as an adult were explored really well. This is a film that I do have on DVD and would probably watch again at some point in the future.
Ink of Blood 