Well, for one, it is badly edited—there are too many unnecessary jumps at wrongtimes which smother the full fleshing-out of characters. The Michael Crichton story, tobegin with, had tremendous possibilities in it. An Arab noble (Antonio Banderas) findshimself facing a dark, hideous band of cannibals hell-bent on destroying Vikingsettlements at the far edge of the 'civilised' world. The times are vague buthint of an era when Arabs carried the torch of education and culture and Europeans werestill a bunch of barbarians.
Banderas is in this situation because of loving the wrong kind of woman. The Vikings,in turn, are victims of their superstitions and beliefs, which come to haunt them in theform of the bear skin-sporting, half-human cannibals. Their hope rests in the 12 fierceViking warriors who save Antonio's caravan from Tartar bandits. The Arab turns out tobe the unwilling 13th member of the rescue party because of a prophecy, which calls forthe inclusion of an outsider in the team.
At this point, movies like Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven presented aninteresting study of a human drama in the midst of great action. The 13th Warriorrecreates the ruggedness and barbarity of the people and the terrain, but fails to enlivenit with Beowulf (the European medieval epic which speaks of a similar battle againstimpossible odds) type insights. The Arab-Viking interface, which could have beenexplosively funny, degenerates into a simplistic and boring exchange of wisecracks andinnuendoes. Banderas' character tailspins into a caricature of the typical easterner,who suddenly decides to offer namaaz at the wrong moment, while the ordinary Vikings nevercome across as more than a ragtag band of submissive subjects.
The tension between results and intentions is obvious enough to suspect theinterference of the ubiquitous studio hand. The movie's release was actually heldback by Twentieth Century Fox, and the period was utilised by studio bosses to apply theirown vision of a successful film. For once they failed—was it because the politicalnuances of the subject were too hot to handle?
