Bullet Points: Solomon Kane
I am a sucker for period pieces. Especially ones that go back as far as the story of Solomon Kane. Robert E. Howard has created some pretty intense characters over the years. Well, to be honest, Solomon Kane and Conan are the only two that I know but those are some seriously cool characters in their own right. Let’s see if the movie version can live up to the history.
Synopsis: A ruthless mercenary renounces violence after learning his soul is bound for hell. When a young girl is kidnapped and her family slain by a sorcerer’s murderous cult, he is forced to fight and seek his redemption slaying evil.
- Pirate Badass: There are not many things cooler than a badass pirate. Maybe a ninja or some space rogue like Han Solo, but we meet Solomon Kane as a pirate who loves a good bit of treasure. It’s in his pirate DNA. Kane is a captain on board a ship that is putting work in on the coast of Northern Africa. It’s there that he loses his crew trying to get to a massive treasure. A pirate do what a pirate do.
- Not him again: Kane comes upon a massive pile of treasure before realizing that there is some devilish work at play. It might be the year 1600 but he has the greedy characteristics of a Wall Street dude. What does happen, though, is that Kane discovers that he’s cursed and retreats to the safety of the Christian church for hiding.
- Thanks for coming: Living the peaceful life just isn’t for everyone. Solomon eventually gets booted out of the church and finds himself on the road to nowhere. It isn’t long before he is being attacked by thieves and his whole peaceful lifestyle is put to the test. Lucky for him, a family of Puritans finds him and nurses him back to health. They also start finding the humanity in Solomon that he forgot he had. He even thinks about joining them on their expedition to the New World. That is until they’re brutally attacked on the road by men serving the supremely evil Malachi.
- Kane returns: Solomon jumps back into his killing ways with both feet. He’s only been not pirating for a year but having your soul cursed by a bunch of demons and Hell spawns can really mess with your psyche. It takes some death from his Puritan friends to really drive Kane into the frenzy a man of his nature needs to revert back to his old ways. It’s good too. Kane slices and dices with the best of them and the evil dudes following the mysterious Malachi make for the standard kind of canon fodder for heroes to just lay right into.
- Dad’s castle and the Clive Barker mask: Just as you will have guessed by this time, ground zero for this whole ordeal is at Solomon’s daddy’s castle. Solomon ran off as just a kid and lived a pretty successful life as a pirate but it all comes back home after Kane chases down Malachi and his masked buddy. Solomon’s promise to his now dead Puritan friends to chase down their kidnapped daughter means he’ll have to kill a whole lot of bad guys. Most of the movie deals with the redemption of Kane’s character and it all comes to a head while battling his monster brother at his father’s castle. There’s nothing surprising about any of it but it leads to a couple of scenes in the end.
The Verdict: I wish I could say that Solomon Kane was better than I expected but it’s such a “paint by numbers” movie that it’s hard to get excited about most of it. It feels like it could have been better if they had gone for a Hard R rating and really went for it. James Purefoy is cool as Kane the character loses quite a bit of his depth since the movie blasts through his backstory and into the redemption angle so fast. The movie is ultimately just another DTV style action film that has a few cool scenes and a likeable actor as the hero but nothing that pushes it over the edge into being really good.
