Review – Conan the Barbarian

For some reason the studio decided to let director John Milius spend a mint on the production, and for the most part he used the money to good advantage (a couple of expensive-looking sets don’t get much screen time, but other than that the production design looks pretty slick). Even James Earl Jones, drastically under-cast as the film’s cartoonish bad guy, manages to play it all with a reasonably straight face. And let’s face it, this was the role Arnold Schwarzenegger was born to play. Nietzsche and all that aside, this is just about the ultimate achievement in the fantasy film, one of the few movies in the genre that doesn’t play like it was written by teenage D&D junkies and filmed on a sound stage in Toronto. The DVD doesn’t offer much in the way of special features (unless you get the special edition, which has deleted scenes and some other cool stuff), but many of the shots really do need a full wide-screen presentation for proper appreciation. Worth seeing