Mongolian Misunderstanding

We went to see Mongol, a retelling of the life of Genghis Khan, a few weeks ago and were quite impressed. It was very well done, if a bit bloody. Although, as Afshin remarked, considering the subject matter, he's not sure why he was surprised at the gore. Aside from one particular scene (which simply didn't need to be shown in closeup—we knew what was going on without the helpful zoom on some poor bastard's mangled face), I didn't mind the blood: it was largely of the decoratively-splattering, balletically-arcing variety.

It was a rather long movie, but compelling. I found myself engrossed by the misadventures of Temudjin as he grew from a somewhat imperious little boy into a—let's face it—pretty badass man. His wife Borte was pretty awesome, too, as was the actor who played Jamukha (Honglei Sun). Actually, Sun came perilously close to stealing the whole show. Fantastic performance. Anyway, toward the end of the film, there was a scene in which Temudjin is all kitted out in armor, with his flowing hair and impressive helmet, at which point I thought, "Damn! He looks a lot like Genghis Khan!" And then I remembered what the movie was about—not some random Mongolian guy named Temudjin, some Mongolian guy named Temudjin who grows up to be Genghis Khan. Riiiight.

You can check out the trailer below; I promise the film was far better than the trailer would suggest. It's evidently the first of a trilogy.