Mongol (2007)

When we think of the fearsome Genghis Khan, we don't picture him as ever having been a little boy. But he must have been, and that is where this grand throwback to the sweeping historical epics of yesteryear takes up the Great Khan's story.

Mongol has just enough characterization to sustain its own reason for being -- cinematic fullness.

A thoroughly rousing hunk of celluloid, a war saga that blends the sturdiest conventions of old-fashioned heroic storytelling with a few pixilated battle enhancements - check out the soaring blood globs - of the kind that spattered across 300.

The battle sequences are tremendous, and the performances are captivating, making for the sort of rousing, giant-scale entertainment that a figure as towering as Genghis Khan deserves.

Mongol, from its thrilling battles to its intimate romance, has the look, scale, story and feel of an old-fashioned epic in the best and biggest sense of the word.

The action sequences here are first-rate, the performances are uniformly excellent, the cinematography as good as I've seen in any film this year.

A movie in which acting still prevails is Mongol. People often say, 'They don't make movies like they used to.' Maybe the Russians make movies like Hollywood used to. Mongol, photographed beautifully in Kazakhstan and the Chinese province of

This would have been one of the greatest all time epics, but there were some major gaps in the story.

...probably not the movie most audiences expected.

Visually stunning, historically interesting, and very entertaining.

It's a lumbering, emotionally cold, slow-going old-fashioned escapist sweeping biopic on the early years of Genghis Khan.

... Bodrov's engaging vision of Genghis Khan in several moments almost feels like the silent movie epics by the Russian cinematic pioneer Sergei Eisenstein.