10,000 BC [2008] | ![10,000 BC [2008]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/518ty4966%2BL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Director: Roland Emmerich
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: £15.99
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Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 897
Format: Pal
Language: English (Unknown)
Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
Region: 2
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 105 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 7321902139685
ASIN: B0014W0E1S
Theatrical Release Date: 2008
Release Date: July 21, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Amazon.co.uk Review
To anyone who has ever yearned to see woolly mammoths in full stampede across the Alps, 10,000 BC can be heartily recommended. There's also a flock of "terror birds" (lethal ostriches on steroids) in a steaming jungle only a splice away from the heroes' snow-dusted alpine habitat. And lo, somewhere in the vastness of the North African desert lies a city whose slave inhabitants alternately teem like the crowds in Quo Vadis during the burning of Rome and trudge in hieratically menacing formations like the workers in Metropolis. That's pretty much it for the cool stuff. Setting movies in prehistoric times is dicey. Apart from the "Dawn of Man" sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey, only Quest for Fire makes the grade, and its creators had the good sense to limit the dialogue to grunts and moans. 10,000 BC boasts a quasi-biblical narrator (Omar Sharif) and characters who speak in formed, albeit uninteresting, sentences (including a New Age-y "I understand your pain"). But let no one say the storytelling isn't primitive. The narrator speaks of "the legend of the child with the blue eyes" and bingo, here's the kid now. When, grown up to be Camilla Belle, she's carried off by "four-legged demons" (guys on horseback to you). The neighbour boy (Steven Strait) who hankers to make myth with her leads a rescue mission into the great unknown world beyond their mountaintop. His name is D'Leh, which is Held, the German for "knight," spelled backward. So yes, there is some hidden meaning after all. 10,000 BC is the latest triumph of the ersatz from writer-director Roland Emmerich. Like Stargate (1994), Independence Day (1996), and The Day After Tomorrow (2004) before it, it's shamelessly cobbled together out of every movie Emmerich can remember to pilfer from (though to be fair, the section in pre-ancient Egypt harks back to his own Stargate). Emmerich's saving grace is that his films' cheesiness is so flagrant, his narratives so geared for instant gratification, he can seem like a kid simultaneously improvising and acting out a story in his backyard: "P'tend there's this alien ... p'tend maybe he came from Atlantis or something...." Just don't p'tend it has anything to do with real moviemaking. --Richard T. Jameson
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| Customer Reviews: Read 35 more reviews...
 WATCHABLE October 12, 2008
stuart (MIDDLESBROUGH, ENGLAND)
Coming off some rather poor reviews, I expected failure from this movie, and the first ten minutes delivered all the fail I anticipated. After that, it drastically improved, and while it didn't succeed as an epic, it was very lively and highly imaginative.
Starting with the bad, most of the dialogue just plain sucks. It's great that they tried to make the people sound simple, being this is 10,000 BC, but the kids (D'leh and Evolet) had these really painfully Arab-esquire accents and awkward dialogue reminiscent of Attack of the Clones Padme and Anakin. The dumb little kid who follows the hunters also is an embarrassing addition, but thankfully his dialogue is limited.
The minor characters, such as the English-speaking African chief, are the only characters who really shine with their simplistic dialogue, and even D'leh sometimes narrowly misses having his lines crumble to sheer stupidity.
Also a major detractment is the narrator, who is mostly completely un-needed save to further some events. Other times, we really don't need to hear him, such as the very end when the Old Mother supposedly 'breathes life' into Evolet. The images showed this clearly enough without needless narration.
In the beginning, the special effects are rather poor, as you can very clearly see that a character doesn't fit in the background environment, as if they were filmed in front of a green screen, and then attempts at digitally removing the green glare only smeared the picture.
Also, it was clearly not necessary to have the ice people of D'leh speak English, as they are the only English-speaking tribe in the movie, and it would have far better served the atmosphere to have them speaking a more primitive language, with more hand and facial gestures than verbosity.
The action sequences, costumes, cinematography, and sets were spectacular, and managed to tell the greater story (oppressed tribes banding together to overthrow a tyrant) in a way that far supersedes the main individual story of D'leh trying to save Evolet, though from the prophetic viewpoint, it was interesting how they twisted the two together, having it be that only D'leh's desire to save Evolet could make him lead the tribes to freedom. To sum, the movie succeeds in macro-storytelling, but fails in micro-storytelling.
As for the historical accuracy... it's very imaginative. And it requires you to use your imagination to explain certain things.
For one, the pyramids in what is clearly Egypt. I thought it was a great explanation to show them using Mammoths to pull their limestone (since even today historians are marveled at how they could have pulled such stones with manpower alone), and though the first pyramids were built some 7,000 years after this movie takes place, the movie makes sure that it is left open to interpretation.
What? The pyramids are barely half-way completed in the movie, and the slaves and tribes revolt against their ruler (a tall, godlike figure who must maintain his illusion of divinity to a point of never being seen; his personal slaves are all blind), leaving the pyramids incomplete. You could easily imagine that the pyramids could left incomplete for thousands of years, before a civilization known to us as the Egyptians of hieroglyphs and mummies worked to complete them. Sands could have eroded the pyramids, covering them up completely, or who knows? The movie doesn't definitively say the pyramids were built in 10,000 BC: only that they were begun, and presumably not completed by the original builders.
In all, it's a beautifully done movie, which suffers from poor micro-storytelling. If the total story were in the forefront, and the love story reduced to a subplot, I think it would have been a far better movie.
 TOTALLY LOVED THIS FILM October 8, 2008
purple poodle (UK)
I think with all the bad reviews I actually rented this film just to see how bad it was. If I got to see a sabre tooth tiger on my screen no matter how bad the special effects, then I would be a happy bunny!
I expected some random story line about cavemen running about and fleeing from dangerous animals but there was a much deeper story line and I was very pleasantly surprised. Not what I was expecting at all.
If all you want on a Saturday evening once you've put the kids to bed is to sit and enjoy an uncomplicated film with a good story line and good special effects, I recommend this 100%. This is an unpretenrious film and goes great with a takeaway and a bottle of wine! I totally loved it!
 WAS WORTH SEEING AND I THOUROUGHLY ENJOYED IT September 27, 2008
Mrs. A. J. Hayes (solihull)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I dont know why this film has such a bad press....I went to see this film with my friends having read nothing about it and only knowing it was called 10,000 BC i expected cavemen etc....but it was nothing like that infact its a love story and it was well worth watching and im so glad i went to see it!! :D
 The words "bloody" and "awful" spring to mind September 9, 2008
Paul S. Gibbs (East Ham, London United Kingdom)
Okay, love Emmelich films. Turn off your brian, watch the eye candy, go 'ooh'. That's the approach, that's how to get enjoyment out of the film. They're not here as textual excercises in deep film making. They're popcorn films for the hard-of-thinking.
But that's no excuse for this shambles. I mean, when you spend half the film trying to work out which dreadlocked guy is which it kind of detracts from the experience and makes the narrative journey a nightmare.
So okay, pretty effects but some shocking ones too. Psycho dodoes anyone!!
So it's not accurate....so what? September 1, 2008
O. Doyle (Ireland)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
It's best to view this movie with the proper expectations. It certainly wasn't designed to be a realistic or historically accurate portrayal of the times, but better serves as a tale of human struggle by a fictional tribe while on a journey with other tribes to recapture their people who were taken as slaves by a more advanced civilization.
Yes there are many inconsistencies with this film as it relates to time, place, and languages spoken. However, it had great cinematography, special effects, and action sequences. The story won't win an Oscar but it was better than some of the offerings at the cinema at the moment. The acting was fairly good and although some of the dialogue was very cliched and the characters made some weird and dumb decisions (like freeing a saber tooth tiger, and hoping it doesn't eat you afterwards), overall it was a fun action movie that the kids would enjoy. But if a science teacher tells you to write a report about life 10,000 years ago I wouldn't base the paper on what this movie says. Wooly Mammoths working in the desert to create the pyramids?!?!? Maybe not.
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