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TV show review: CONTINUUM season 4
PHOTOGRAPHY

SOLOMON KANE

DVD Review by David Blackwell

 

DETAILS: 104 minutes, audio commentary, deleted scene, featurette, two interviews, visual effects featurette, concept art

VIDEO:  2.35:1 (Anamorphic Widescreen)

AUDIO:  English 5.1 Dolby Digital

Subtitles: English SHD, Spanish

 

STUDIO: Anchor Bay Entertainment/ Wandering Star Pictures/ Davis Films/ Cap Films/ Radius-TWC

RELEASE DATE:  7-16-2013

SOLOMON KANE is a gritty fantasy action picture.  It is the story of how Captain Solomon Kane went from being a murderous bad man to a puritanical avenger.   It reminds me of the medieval adventure films and 1980s films like CONAN THE BARBARIAN and CONAN THE DESTROYER.   Writer/ Director Michael J. Bassett weaves a dark tale during the 16th century that could take place in the real world as Solomon Kane is trying to find peace for his damned soul which the devil wants.  This origin tale is based on the puritanical avenger character created by Robert E. Howard (the creator of Conan).  I like how dark and gritty it is while mixing it in with a tale about redemption and salvation.  Solomon Kane wants hope, but sometimes he feels without hope.  He travels with a Puritan family (bound for the New World) as he tries to live a life without doing violence.  Events caused by the evil forces of the sorcerer Malachi forces Solomon to take up weapons again as he tries to save the soul of a young Puritan woman based on a promise he swore to a dying father. 

 

The production design is great in this movie and James Purefoy does wonders with what material there is for his character, but every character is underdeveloped to one degree or another.   Then the main villain Malachi shows up for one scene at the end and you don’t get much sense on his minions other than they do evil things like burn towns, kill people, and take slaves.  I enjoyed the action, but I wish this movie had a more developed story with some character development like developing the men seeking Solomon Kane’s help instead of them being just one dimensional ciphers to help move the story along.  You don’t really care for many of the characters except for Kane and his quest to rescue Meredith.   I am glad I did finally see this movie that has been long delayed from release in the USA and yet it doesn’t live up to the legend that grew around it not being released here since 2009.

 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Feature Audio Commentary with Writer/ Director Michael J. Bassett and star James Purefoy

 

THE MAKING OF SOLOMON KANE is an eleven minute promotional featurette.

The deleted scene is a cave fight that the director tried to keep in, but he cut it because he couldn’t have it with fit with the story he was telling in any edit of SOLOMON KANE.

SPECIAL FX: THE CREATION OF THE FIRE DEMON shows all of the elements that went into creating a CG Fire Demon.

 

The best extras are the interviews with Writer/ Director Michael J. Bassett and star James Purefoy.  Michael talks about how he wanted to do a serious action picture and how this first SOLOM KANE movie is an origin story and he is excited to hopefully make a couple of more fantasy adventure tales.  James talks about the difficulty of filming two of the scenes due to the cold Prague winter that the rain effects didn’t help (but he said added to the weariness of the character) and what he did to get into the head of Solomon Kane (he read all of Robert E. Howard’s books and poems in addition to reading about the Puritans).

Also included is the one minute gallery of concept art and previews for other releases before the main menu.

 

FINAL ANALYSIS:   SOLOMON KANE is a gritty fantasy adventure tale which manages to get over the hurdle that most origins tales have, but I do wish they had more character development for the other characters besides just Solomon Kane.  The movie doesn’t live up to the legend that built up since the release in other countries back in 2009.

 

This DVD review is (c)7-20-2013 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

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