Tales of an Ancient Empire

I watched this movie because I'm a fan of Kevin Sorbo and I love fantasy type movies. Why Kevin why did you do this film? I have now seen the worst movie ever made...seriously. If you would have told me this was a high school theater project, I would have believed it. The acting was the worst, except for Kevin, who tried with what little he had. The backdrops looked like paintings in some places...paintings!! Don't waste your time here, I could have made a better looking and more coherent story with my sonycam. I don't know what's with the paid shills giving this movie good reviews, but trust me, it's the worst, dare I call it a movie, ever made, without a doubt.

More accurate title for this film might have been TALES OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE: PART ONE. Those expecting a typical sword and sorcery adventure, featuring many sword fights and sorcery action, dungeons - all that stuff - will be sorely disappointed. Instead we get an ungainly amalgam of the HBO series Rome, with its complex intrigues and characters and Magnificent Seven with its banding and bonding of iconic types for a good cause. Kevin Sorbo fans will not be disappointed as the former Hercules star is at the top of his heroic humorous game. Indeed he is the best aspect of this low budget epic. Without giving away too much, its the story of a dysfunctional family. In its lower class way, a adventure fantasy Lion in the Winter with five bastard children seeking dear old Father and clearly his acceptance and approval. The core story is a legendary mercenary warrior impregnated a number of wenches, evil sorceress vampires, Queens and common village women, in his years of adventuring. Then after bedding them, he moved on to further adventures and conquests. Its not that unbelievable that it probably happened often back in medieval times. Left behind were his children, all wounded and damaged. When we meet each, its clear they are struggling to reach a peace with the abandonment, but its doomed each to shady lives as thieves, whores and essentially losers. The conceit of this movie is that a Princess (Melissa Ordway) needs to find her Father because it was he who saved the kingdom years earlier. She is the love child of this mercenary warrior and the Queen of a kingdom called Abelar. Her quest to find him, brings her into contact with her half brothers and sisters. They need to find Father not just to win back Abelar but, most importantly, to heal their wounds of abandonment. The biggest stretch is the film's primary villain, a sexy vampire sorceress (Whitney Able) was also seduced by the mercenary warrior and produced a child called Kara (Victoria Maurette), who Xia had surrendered her baby, when she was reduced to dust years earlier by this mercenary. Its a bit convolute but easy to track. Kara somehow becomes part of the Queen's court by the time she's a young adult and the movie tracks her quest to become who she really is, child of a vampire. She's chosen to shadow the Princess and to learn where her Father is. For the most part, the film works really well. Ordway is a good Princess, Maurette is a superb Kara, and the action there is are as good as you would expect from the man behind Cyborg and Nemesis There is also a deft comedic touch in the right places – Kevin Sorbo and the other siblings make sure of that - and the gentle laughs are spaced well between the questing. So why is this only a 6 rated film? The problem lies in the bigger story around the bastard kids, which attempts to make their Father a larger than life mythical warrior. The issue is we never get to SEE him. Oh, we hear him (not too good voice actor) and see his hooded shape but never the man himself. He's a total cipher and therein lies the biggest failing of the film. It leads to big expectations of finding Father, then once found, it leads to a great reveal of this great warrior, but the film simply ENDS. Tales of an Ancient Empire gets bogged down repeatedly in its exploration and reveal of the dense back story which initially works in context at first, but soon becomes a millstone around the movie's neck as the characters are forced to talk about Father's legend rather than see his exploits play out. Even this would have been forgivable if not for the ending, which pushes all the wrong buttons in its attempt to be an iconic grand finale and effectively undoes much of the movie's good work. The weak visual effects does the film no favors either. With its limited budget, Tales of an Ancient Empire looks great but this is not the gritty sword and sorcery adventure that many had hoped for - in fact, it hardly even counts as a sequel to the director's The Sword and the Sorcerer. What it does have is a dense, but compelling narrative, a visually inventive style and great bits of acting from the attractive cast. Able, Ordway and Maurette might be a touch too earnest in their performances but they give the film an underlying emotional depth not usually seen in this genre. Both are, of course, gorgeous to look at. Its just too bad it doesn't end with a proper climatic battle.

I agree with jewel5's review, I had not seen Lee Horsley in anything since he did the series "Paradise", He was a very popular actor in the 1980's. He had the starring role in " Sword and the Sorcerer", and I thought this was a sequel to his character "Talon". I was totally wrong about that, he had a very small cameo role and was listed as "The Stranger"?? This movie was a mess from the beginning, and Michael Pare's acting was terrible, he sounds like he is reading "Q" cards. I guess Lee Horsley's acting career is limited to "cameo" roles of less than "B" movies now, this is a shame that a gifted actor such as Horsley is reduced to this because of his age(mid 50's I believe). I rated this a 1 out of 10, but it should be a 0 out of ten!!

One thing about TALES OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE it can now be placed alongside John Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS as one of the films with the longest pre-credit sequences that stretches for about 12 minutes long. When it does get started it shows a lot of potential in terms of plot and the cast all give competent performances all around. The look of the film isn't bad in fact but it's major downfall is that it has a terrible execution especially during the third act.

The first half of the film is watchable but once it passes the hour mark it's almost like the story was rushed just to get to the end. The whole plot from there became incredibly confusing and felt like the scriptwriter Cynthia Curnan just wanted to get it done as if she got tired of working on it.

The one thing that could've helped this film be more entertaining would've been to give Olivier Gruner and Sasha Mitchell's characters both a much bigger role in this film. They only make brief appearances but in that short time their characters actually seemed likable and both had great on screen chemistry. The film would've been a whole lot better if it was written as a vehicle for them.

Overall, It's a potentially good concept undone by a bad execution.

As soon as I saw that this was out, I rented it. Wow, what a piece of crap. It had none of the fun of the original and really didn't even tell a story at all. Lee Horsley Does appear but only for a minute and it is disappointing. Some of the plot devices from the original are used but wasted and the whole thing appears to be shot on video. The Tri-Sword appears off camera but is used very poorly. Michael Pare takes the place as the hero/ betrayer of the Sorceress vampire Whatever. Every episode of Hercules is better than this piece of junk. If you want a movie worth of the original, try "season of the Witch" or Solomon Kane.