The Rising Hawk

All of the negative reviews. This was a good movie. Action, drama, romance, and a horse chase (no cars lol). It was nominated for 5 awards and won 3. The fight scenes were good, and a lot of them. This is a good weekend watch, with the popcorn and potato chips. Grab the beverage of your choice and enjoy a good flick. This is worth the watch, maybe even a couple of times. Also my 2 cents worth. The people who only watch 5 or 10 minutes of the movie should not be allowed to trash it. Nuff Said Mike Out.

Ok here we go again with the Superfluous filler to make my 600 characters. Why do some get away with a couple of lines? Okay, again, Nuff Said Mike Out.

In the 13th century, common folks escape the bloodshed from the Mongol invasion in Kyiv for the safety of the Carpathian Mountains. Maksim (Alex MacNicoll) saves Myroslava (Poppy Drayton) and she convinces her powerful father Tuhar Vovk (Tommy Flanagan) to attend a celebration in Maksim's settlement led by Maksim's father Zakhar Berkut (Robert Patrick). Tuhar looks down upon and distrusts these mountain folk. After an attack, Maksim and his brother rescue many prisoners and in the process, kill the son of Mongol general Burunda Khan. The Khan intends on revenge.

This is an Ukrainian sword and sandal historical drama. MacNicoll has the looks but he does need a bit more charisma to lead. Drayton does have both. It is odd that the story and production is Ukrainian but most of the actors are English westerners. It is what it is. It's a fine B-movie. It's too long at just over two hours. There are sections in the second half which drags. This can't be the highest Khan. Also the action is a little over the top. I do like some of it and that's enough to keep my attention. It's barely passable.

This Ukrainian made movie in English has patches of spoken language pronunciation problems which is difficult to apprehend. All the invaders' language has no English subtitles which is a discouraging factor.

The story itself is entertaining and interesting, moving along at a fair pace. Once the invaders arrive, it becomes more exciting with good fighting scenes. The climax raises the overall star rating to a decent 6.

I don't understand all the hate in here. Sure, the plot isn't the best, and some things (mix of American and British accents, obvious plastic surgery on one female character's face) feel a bit out of place, but you got lots of good action, good costumes (one guy said the costumes are bad, I don't know what he's on about), good landscape shots, and the Mongols have fitting Asian actors (the Khan is played by a Mongolian actor, I didn't check what country the others are from), and actually spea Mongolian, which is a huge authenticity plus. Speaking of which, I noticed a few people in here complaining about no subtitles for the Mongolian parts. I don't know which version they watched, the one I watched had subtitles for every single bit of Mongolian dialogue, of which there is actually quite a bit btw, so I can't imagine watching it without subs. Overall, I think this movie was decent. If I have one other minor complaint, it's that it would be nice if a bit more people survived, but oh well.

Of course the plot was a bit stereotypic and definitely predictable. But if you like medieval kind of movies without expecting that everything is perfectly historically, you will like it. But the blacksmith has to be the strongest man that ever lived ;-)