Review: Mongol by Josh Feola

Mongol is a good film that goes way out of its way to not be great.
It's
visually stunning, historically accurate (I guess), and a more or less
engaging
story. The movie opens with a 5-year-old Temudgin (nee Genghis Khan)
already
calling the shots, kicking ass and taking wives (actually for now only
one wife).
Then some dude kills his dad and that sets off a decades-long beef that
involves (spoiler warning) the god of thunder, magical arctic wolves,
and a LOT of fleeing, entering into, and saving others from
captivity. Lots of horses too.

The movie spends a good deal of time establishing Genghis Khan as a stoic
survivor, an almost-monk who just does what he has to do to hang out with his
wife and unite Mongolia. The actor who portrays adult Genghis masters the
smoldering Buddhist calm vibe, though he does get ill with his scabbard a few
times, as does Khan's childhood blood brother/chief rival, Jamukha, who Bic's
his head with his gnarly blade. (Genghis keeps his braids, rocking the Central Asian
Willie Nelson look for most of the flick.) Genghis soldiers on, biding his time
in various cells as the camera lingers on an admittedly stunning landscape. He
stays true to his school, uniting Mongolia after over two hours of
waiting and ruling his new kingdom by the gentleman-warrior code that he
learned from his father, or maybe that wolf.

The film does not even allude to the fact that he killed
more men, fathered more children, and controlled more land than any other
individual in human history. How a movie that was obviously so carefully researched
and beautifully crafted could fail to capitalize on these salient features of
the life of the sickest marauder to ever do it confuses and saddens me. I
suggest a director's cut adding the following scene:

Mark: would have made a good front man?

me: yeah definitely

prob would have killed anyone not moshing

and impregnated their girlfriends

Mark: who wins in a fight kimbo slice or genghis

me: hmmgood question

probably genghis

bc he has cooler hair

Mark: itd be pretty brutal i imagine whole countries
might not exist after

-Josh Feola