I love this movie so much

the audience applauded

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The movie is beautiful, but that's pretty much all there is...What annoyed me even more than the non-existent or far too simple dialogues were the battle scenes. If you know anything about history, you probably heard about "Mongol horse archers". Those were superior to infantry because of their mobility and superior to cavalry because of their range. They could actually shoot from the saddle and even while retreating.Instead of showing us Mongol horse archers, all fight scenes seem to be fought with Arab swords. You even see them carrying around bows, but not using them. One totally unrealistic battle scene fought with swords in the end stands out, but all of them are totally inaccurate.

I like the story about the renowned Taoist master who was summoned by Genghis Khan in Beijing; missing him there, he had to travel for three years, crossing half of Asia to find him in his camp in Afghanistan, and can you imagine the arduous trek to meet a fearsome man capable of who knows what if displeased. Nothing fruitful came from the encounter eventually, the warlord wanted to know about a secret recipe for immortality, the sage had only Taoism to give. They went their own ways after, one to raid India, the other walked back home. But something did happen. The long journey was chronicled by a companion, giving us a rare glimpse of life from the Great Wall to the Hindu Kush, only possible because an old man set out to go.Journeys can be about who's waiting on the other end or not; but they're always about life glimpsed in the process, ways of traveling. Films too of course.The destination here is a portrait of Genghis, his rise from nothing in the steppe to unify the tribes. It leaves off as he's about to embark on epoch-making history so we don't get the sweeping conquest and atrocity, we get a national hero molded to necessity by a ruthless world. A second film was in the works apparently but scrapped.No matter. It's the lack of real journey that I miss. Oh we do get some glimpse of Mongolian rite and custom along the way, the savagery of life, it was filmed near where events must have taken place, and the faces and dresses on actors look "real" enough, even though the lead is Japanese. But it's always all part of obviously plotted theatrics. The whole shorthand used to jot down this chronicle, the breath that animates it, the eye that looks, none of it feels like it draws soul from another time and corner of the world, none of it jolts from the commonness of "historic epic".I end up with a handful of movie scenes scattered about the steppe, borrowed gestures, poses and silences of somnolence, movie battles, and I'm just not satisfied with airbrushed convention and generic TV- level imagination as ground to walk on. It takes me nowhere.Fun thing to note. This is about a victor who managed to concentrate all this power and then just spilled it over half the known world, leveling and scattering instead of building. The neighboring Chinese were as genocidal as he was (more in fact), but had been cultivating for centuries a narrative of cohesion that creates culture that endures to create abstraction. When they celebrate their treacherous past, it might be Hero that we get.

it is a historical movie and example of impressive cinematography. it has a story who reminds the old legends and a spectacular force of image. a film about the conquest of power, sacrifice and fight. who remains, years ago, like a touching memory about a special form of miracle. more than a film about Genghis Khan first steps for dominate the Mongols, it is a poem in image. the landscapes, the dialogs, the crumbs of myth, the social picture, the spirit of great legends, the power as tool for define itself. a film who, again and again, rediscover the beauty, savage universe. reminds the old rules. preserves the delicacy of mystery.

MONGOL is a biographic drama about the early life of TEMUDJIN (here played by the actor Tadanobu Asano), from his childhood to the point he becomes Genghis Khan, the great leader of all Mongols. This movie focuses essentially in the hard life he had as a child and before he becomes a Khan, and also the way he achieved this major status of the great leader, who united all the nomad Mongol tribes. The film ends at the point he's preparing to conquer other territories.This movie has a wonderful photography/cinematography. The beautiful shots of the Mongolian steppes are truly amazing and the way directing work is done is also great. Some camera angles, details, and combination of the images and sounds in some specific scenes are really outstanding. The soundtrack is also great by the way. Production and acting are very good too. After watch the movie I didn't get surprised by the Academy Oscar nomination as "Best Foreign Language Film of the Year" in 2008 at all!