Warner Brothers

PG-13. 134 min

I think this is a good place to use my new outline of what you expect and what you get. I'm assuming that anybody that gets up off the couch to go see this one is probably a big fan of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or Jackson's film series. If you are a devotee of the novels there's a chance, you're going to be disappointed here just by the subject matter. One might guess that this is one of the sub tales told by Tolkien or even his son Christopher. Nope. If you are a big fan of the Peter Jackson film series you might be thinking that this is one of the places that he left something out or combined a couple of characters into one. Again, nope. The phrases in the advertisements that seem to me to be a dead giveaway are these: based on characters created by, etc... like the film version of WICKED, and which the characters are based on those created by L frank Baum, this is just somebody's story with some familiar characters. Depending on your point of view this could be a cheap attempt to cash into the recent craze of girl power without actually having to play any Spice Girls music. Of course I'm being a little bit facetious, WAR OF THE ROHIRAM is not really all that bad, unless you're looking for accuracy of the original story, which itself borrows a little bit from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and a little bit from Irish mythology BOUDICA warrior Queen. Maybe even NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, but more about that later. The first thing you'll more likely notice is the animation. It follows along the lines of Japanese legendary filmmaker Kenji Kamiyama. Unlike Jackson's movies where the animation and FX were the best anyone had seen; Kamiyama’s animation is not. Oh it doesn't suck, it's not SCOOBY-DOO or HELLO KITTY ty but it absolutely looks cheap compared to some of the things we've come to expect from Dreamworks or Pixar. As a matter of fact it looks a little bit like hentai, though opting for violence as opposed to sex. The story here is of three distinct and powerful lands at people. Rohan and their King Helm Hamerhand, the Dunlendings led at first by Freka and then his son Wolf and the men of Gondor, of which Aragorn will eventually return as the king and the air of the Numenorians, but that won't happen until well after this imaginary tale. As children Hera and Wolf were friends who played together and touched upon romance, albeit lightly. Unfortunately their fathers helm and Freca hated each other and forbid the romance. Freca challenges Helm to a fight and gets killed in the bargain. Wolf snaps and vows revenge against Rohan, Helm and even his ex love Hera. When Helm is murdered Wolf takes the throne and against the wishes of his generals vows to destroy Rohan and Hera completely. Thanks to the council of Saruman the White, Wolf has become a truly despicable creature. From here the bulk of the film is pretty much animated battle scenes and while not quite up to modern animation standards they are still pretty exciting. The silliness I mentioned earlier is where Helm Hammerhead roams the night like Warren Zevon's Roland; undead and killing hundreds of wild men at a time. The story is certainly engaging enough and the characters not without their own charisma. And it never gets boring, even at over 2 hours run time. It's not true to the book the movie or anything else but I still enjoyed it.

B –

WSS