In the mountains, a tribe called the Yagahl survive hunting the mighty Manok (Mammoths). The Yagahl shaman, Old Mother (Mona Hammond) foretells of a prophecy that "four legged demons" (marauders on horseback) will come to their village on the Yagahl's last hunt and the one who kills the demon's leader will be the tribe's leader and win Evolet (Camilla Belle), a lone survivor of a village raided by the demons. A young man named D'Leh (Steven Strait) must rescue Evolet, whom he's loved for years, when the marauders finally arrive lead by their warlord leader (Affif Ben Badra) and take most of the Yagahl tribe prisoner. As D'Leh traverses the harsh primitive world with his fellow tribesman, he'll learn the marauders are but a fraction of a larger threat and become a reluctant uniter of the tribes to free the land from tyranny and enslavement.
10,000 BC comes to us from maker of entertaining but ludicrous box office garbage Roland Emmerich. Four years after Emmerich's last movie The Day After Tomorrow gave the director a needed feather in his cap after some rather "meh" prior outings, Emmerich made a pre-historic adventure film inspired by his admiration of Quest for Fire, the writings of pulp writer Robert E. Howard, and the pseudo archeological book Fingerprints of the Gods. Initially greenlit at Sony Pictures, the project was dropped due to their busy release calendar and the Warner Bros. Ended up picking up the project. The movie was critically panned and is often regarded as Emmerich's worst movie, and box office wise it was a moderate success at most making $265 million against its $105 million budget. The movie is just not that interesting and it doesn't have the aspirations Quest for Fire or Apocalypto, the pulpy viscera of Conan or 300, or even the campy stupid fun of older caveman flicks like One Million Years BC or When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.
The movie at when boiled down to its most bear basics is a chosen one "Moses" narrative of an unlikely hero becoming the leader to take on a powerful tyrant oppressing people. Outside of that, there's really not all that much to this movie with the characters barely defined, albeit attractive, stick figures whose purpose is to look good while running. Omar Sharif provides the narration for the movie, and it's a testament to the man's charisma and credibility as a presence that he sells the nonsense on screen with his voice and gives the movie some semblance of weight (although not much). The movie goes through a nonsensical series of locations from freezing mountains, to humid jungles, to arid deserts in what seems like a manner of days as if these places are a short trip from each other. The villains aren't interesting or memorable, and for the most part don't even have names with their roles credited as Warlord, High Priest, and Almighty. But I could forgive a dull as dirt narrative if the action is good.....it isn't. In a frankly idiotic decision Emmerich framed 10,000 BC with a PG-13 rating in a movie that features animal mauling, bludgeoning weapons, and brutal whippings and it plays like if a Middle School Assistant Principal took a pulp novel or potentially fun nonsensical adventure and censored out all the "naughty bits". The appeal of ANY pre-historic adventure is in the brutal violence and the partial nudity of its cast and we get NONE of that here. The movie doesn't even have the decency to give us some glaringly inaccurate prehistoric beasts for our characters to fight instead giving us really underwhelming Mammoths, a sabre tooth tiger that doesn't do much, and some sort of Cassowary variant so there's not much novelty to this world that's created. And before anyone defends "realism" being a factor, Old Mother's shaman powers are VERY heavily expressed to be real so "realism" should be off the table completely.
10,000 BC promises pulpy pre-historic fun and gives a very by the numbers chosen one story with a PG-13 rating that sanitizes away any sexuality or violence that gives this sort of story its appeal. There's plenty of other movies like this that range from goofy stupidity like One Million Years BC to more thoughtfully constructed pieces like Quest for Fire and Apocalypto. 10,000 BC is stupid without being funny and its serious without being intelligent making this a dull turgid affair you'll be struggling to remember.
