This movie was not as bad as (but MUCH longer than) I expected.
So I thought that “Wolfhound” was going to be a very low-budget fantasy movie with a strong possibility of sucking really bad. I don’t like to know too much about a movie before I see it, so I didn’t read the details–it just looked lonely sitting there on the shelf at the video store. It turns out it is actually a blockbuster fantasy film with lots of pretty good swordfights, tons of beautiful on-location filming, and even some special effects. But here’s the catch: It’s a badly dubbed cheesy RUSSIAN blockbuster fantasy film, and it’s 2 hours and 15 minutes long and totally self-indulgent. So basically to Americans it will look and sound like it was made about 20 years ago.
This movie started off with a totally derivative scene and I started to think it was going to be a total waste. But by the time the real bad guy shows up in about the 4th or 5th scene I was interested in it. It’s hard to be fair to a film that was made in another language by people from another culture and then dubbed. This film was a great success in Russia. But it clearly won’t have the same appeal to Americans. Our standards for special effects and dialogue and all the hollywood magic are very high. And cultural issues and a backlog of fantasy movies will make it feel even more derivative and weird to us (it did to me.) But, here are some of the many things I enjoyed about it:
- Good swordfights and lots of action scenes. As a bonus, lots of stunts and special effects were done “in camera,” ie non-computer generated. For example, the main character has a pet bat, which I’m sure (from the way the actors react to it) was an actual trained bat, not CGI. These guys hired bat wranglers. Did Peter Jackson hire bat wranglers? I don’t think so. I am making up a new tag for this film. “Bat Wranglers.
- A lot of beautiful cool on-location scenes. The cast and crew of this movie put a lot of work put into the locations and shooting. There were some very beautiful outdoor shots and long close-ups of the cast and props and settings, and the director decided to keep them ALL in the movie. This slowed it down a lot. But it was interesting.
- A very visually fascinating cast. The mediocre voice dubbing did not flatter the actors, but the hot girls were hot, the rough hero was a seriously believable tangle of dreadlocks and scars, and the bad guy was downright awesome. Ok, he was basically Sauron from Peter Jackson’s rendition of LOTR with a twist of Skeletor from He-Man. But if you’re going to rip off something, ripping of the most awesome fantasy movie scene ever is a good place to start.
- By the way, just for your reference, the “most awesome fantasy movie scene ever” is in the beginning of ”The Fellowship of the Ring” where Peter Jackson recreates Sauron and the battle that culminates in Isuldur chopping of Sauron’s finger. Don’t argue with me about this, it’s an entirely self evident fact, not just my opinion. And if you are a LOTR geek and you think you read the Silmarillian, don’t even start with me about Gilgalad and Elendil and author’s intent. It’s all irrelevant. The movie awesomeness of that scene was about how ultimately bad-ass and frightening Sauron was, even if Peter Jackson kinda changed the story. Tolkein himself changed it like 5 times anyway, and he would have been proud.
Anyway, this Wolfhound movie is medicore to bad in a lot of ways, but not so bad in certain ways. It turns out that it is based on a novel called Volkodav by russian author Mariya Semyonova. Like the novel, the movie is derivative, self-indulgent and long. These are things that often don’t stop a novel from being popular. But they are usually a lot more detrimental in movies.
All this criticism aside, you may want to see this film. If you don’t mind long movies with mediocre voice dubbing and derivative fantasy plots, this movie may be just the thing to help you get your fix of swordfighting, cheesy magic, and fair maidens (the hot russian variety of fair maidens.) Also, this movie has some romance and incidental nudity, but basically exactly the wrong amount of nudity. Just enough skin to offend the book-burners and prudes, but nowhere near enough to titillate all you perverts out there.
- Director: Nikolai Lebedev
- Length: 2 Hours, 16 minutes. Yeah, really, really long.
- IMBD: Volkodav iz roda Serykh Psov
