"Mongol"

So I finally got around to watching "Mongol", which I'd been wanting to watch for quite some time now. Like many of you, one gets busy and one forgets. "Mongol" was stunning. The film's cinematography was brilliant, but what really stood out to me was the film's writing. In it's economy of words, it's subtle humor, the underlying drama. My only criticism of this film was Temudjin himself (Genghis before he was Khan), played by Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano, whose performance was a bit sleepy. Maybe I just yearned to see a more brutal Temudjin. But it's necessary to know, this film was drawn from The Secret History of the Mongols, a Mongolian text that presents Temudjin as a more humane man who came from humble origins, which are quite different from that of the brutal, one-dimensional histories written by the (conquered) Chinese or Russians. That said, I can't wait for director Sergei Bodrov's second installment. If you're looking for blood and guts, this might not be the one. Nevertheless, here's the trailer for the first..