Conan the Barbarian (R)
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Screenwriter Lem Dobbs once said, "There is nothing more boring than an hour spent in the company of a great raconteur." True enough, generally speaking--but not in the case of auteur/raconteur John Milius, whose tall tales about life in Seventies Hollywood rival the shaggy-dog quality of his own superb script for The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. By the Eighties, alas, Milius's old-fashioned yarn-spinning bluster gave way to that of an implacable and impersonal Cold Warrior--the grimmest skirmish being this would-be blockbuster from 1982. Today's audiences may forget that Conan was widely anticipated to be Milius's entry into the big-bucks sphere of his buddies Spielberg and Lucas--which is funny because this dark, sour-faced lump of a movie never had a chance. Mostly ignoring the fanciful, Boschian script by Oliver Stone, the director uses Basil Pouledoris's metal-on-metal score and the side-of-beef bod of the newly famous Arnold Schwarzenegger to mimic the geeky machismo of one of Frank Fraschetta's paintings of Viking hunks and the Amazons who love them. (Midwesterners may recall the likes of these painted on the side doors of stoner vans in the late Seventies.) There's no mirth in Conan, and no color or sensuality, either--just Der Arnold scowling and hacking with Der Broadsword. (Matthew Wilder)
Review by Matthew Wilder
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