Film Details:
10,000 BC (12A)
Action (2008) 108mins US/NZ
Director: Roland Emmerich
Starring: Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis

A young warrior called D'Leh falls madly in love with the beautiful Evolet. They are destined to be together until a group of evil warlords raid D'Leh's village and kidnap Evolet, spiriting her away to an empire where great pyramids rise into the sky. Determined to save his beloved from her captors, D'Leh leads a small band of warriors into the great unknown, uncountering lost civilizations and prehistoric predators with a thirst for human blood. The path to Evolet is littered with dangers but D'Leh is joined on his quest by other tribes who have been attacked by the warlords and are hungry for revenge.

LondonNet Film Review
10,000 BC

Director Roland Emmerich has spent half his career trying to obliterate planet Earth and humankind with it...

Sowing the seeds of destruction with Stargate, he unleashed computer-generated fury on a grand scale in Independence Day, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow, a film which imagined the return of the Ice Age. Emmerich's brain must still frozen - that's the only explanation for the dreadful dialogue, risible plotting and wafer-thin characterisation in 10,000 BC, a rollicking journey through the dawn of time, which stampedes historical and geographical accuracy under the hooves of a herd of belligerent woolly mammoths (or "manuk" as they are called here).

Emmerich and co-writer Harald Kloser, who also composed the film's deafening score, fling a spear through subtlety with the opening lines of Omar Sharif's narration - "Only time can teach us what is truth and what is legend..." - revealing a discomfiting truth: everyone involved is taking this nonsense seriously. Admittedly there are a couple of light comic interludes like the fresh-faced hero naively chomping down a red chili or his rebuke to a tribal elder who decrees he is too young to lead the rebellion ("Tell him I am older than I look".)

However, the vast majority of laughs are unintentional like a curious episode with a sabre-tooth tiger (known here as "spear tooth"), which mirrors the fable of Androcles and the lion; our gallant hero saves the beast from a watery grave with the stuttering plea, "Do not eat me when I set you free." Sadly, the over-sized critters in Emmerich's film do not talk back to this gibberish - if they did, they would surely confess to being half-realised escapees from Spielberg's Jurassic Park.

On the snowy peaks of a Siberian mountain range, the Yagahl tribe unites in the face of adversity, awaiting the arrival of a child with blue eyes as decreed in ancient prophecy. The legendary whippersnapper arrives, and blossoms into beautiful and headstrong Evolet (Camilla Belle). Her beloved is the warrior D'Leh (Steven Strait), a fretful young man with impressive pecs and a fine head of dreadlocks, who can win the girl and the white spear - the symbol of the tribe leader - by piercing the heart of a manuk. D'Leh slays the beast by luck and is forced to relinquish the white spear to his guardian Tic'Tic (Cliff Curtis), who reminds him, "It is not the way of the Yagahl to claim the white spear with a lie." Evolet is heartbroken that D'Leh has given up his claim to her as well, but any tantrums are short-lived because the dire prediction of soothsayer Old Mother (Mona Hammond) comes true and an evil warlord (Affif Ben Badra) and his men storm the settlement, enslaving many of the Yagahl, including Evolet.

Determined to save his beloved, D'Leh joins Tic'Tic, fellow warrior Ka'Ren (Mo Zinal) and orphan boy Baku (Nathanael Baring) on a perilous quest into the great unknown, encountering lost civilizations including the superstitious, spear-wielding clan led by Nakudu (Joel Virgil), whose wife was murdered by the very same warlord and his henchman One-Eye (Marco Khan). Conveniently, Nakudu's young son Tudu (Junior Oliphant) has also been taken hostage. Thus tribes from across the world come together behind D'Leh to face the warlord and his enigmatic leader - the self-anointed Almighty who uses the captives to build great pyramids, and would rather destroy his people than set them free.

10,000 BC might be good entertainment if it treated each absurd detour with a knowing wink and a smile, but Emmerich and Kloser are far too absorbed in projecting this simple rites of passage story (the young pretender's rise to noble leader) onto the widest possible canvas. Thus, D'Leh and his brethren gallivant across ice-laden peaks, sweltering desert and lush, tropical forest wearing nothing more than loin cloths and impressively whitened smiles, clashing with a flock of giant, carnivorous chicken for a laughable, protracted chase through the trees and undergrowth.

Surprisingly, considering his blockbuster pedigree, Emmerich struggles to deliver adrenaline-pumping thrills in the action sequences, wading through a pedestrian middle hour before the final showdown on the pyramids, which draws comparisons with Mel Gibson's vastly superior Apocalypto. Production design for the finale is impressive, even if some of the computer effects work is unconvincing and the dramatic pay-off a huge anti-climax.

Strait's most outstanding feature is his chest, overshadowing what little work he does with his face to reflect his hero's exertions or the unwavering love for Evolet which he likens to the brightest star in the sky: "That light in my heart will never go away," he whispers drippily. His accent is completely different to the vapid Belle, who spends most of the film squinting the dust away from her blue contact lenses. Curtis's role as the wily mentor is underwritten, feeding D'Leh snippets of information at appropriate junctures to ensure the plot reaches its mumbo jumbo resolution. Badra is a promising diversion as the bad guy, who whips the heroine into submission by snarling, "I like your spirit but I will have to break it." Ours is broken at roughly the same time and no amount of silly prophecies, human sacrifices or thunderous mammoth stampedes can revive it.

- Kim Hu