While Musa offers very little new to the genre of historical action epics it manages to be more entertaining than most of its ilk. It's rather difficult to explain why it is so though.
Film's story is quite thin and despite its connections to real history it mostly acts only as very straightforward device to take characters from one battle to the next. Characters are pretty much your typical collection of stereotypes; proud and insecure general, snobby princess, humble and noble veteran captain and of course the honorable and brooding hero. If you've seen a few of these movies before you'll know exactly what's going to happen in this one.
Acting is quite good though some of the characters give little space for expressing anything beyond their caricature traits. Action sequences are very well made and enjoyably bloody. I must emphasize the fact that fights in Musa are not the massive battles between armies like in Braveheart but skirmishes comprising few dozen people at most (I don't find this necessarily bad but it makes me wonder the budget of $60M).
Cinematography is generally beautiful but I could have lived without some of the most clichéd slow motions (like the ones during the final battle). Score is rather bland and the song during the ending credits fits the movie amazingly poorly.
What else? Well, despite my partially negative review I actually enjoyed the movie. It's way above the Gladiator and about as good as Braveheart (comparing it to movies that seem to appear in most of the reviews anyway). 7/10
Film's story is quite thin and despite its connections to real history it mostly acts only as very straightforward device to take characters from one battle to the next. Characters are pretty much your typical collection of stereotypes; proud and insecure general, snobby princess, humble and noble veteran captain and of course the honorable and brooding hero. If you've seen a few of these movies before you'll know exactly what's going to happen in this one.
Acting is quite good though some of the characters give little space for expressing anything beyond their caricature traits. Action sequences are very well made and enjoyably bloody. I must emphasize the fact that fights in Musa are not the massive battles between armies like in Braveheart but skirmishes comprising few dozen people at most (I don't find this necessarily bad but it makes me wonder the budget of $60M).
Cinematography is generally beautiful but I could have lived without some of the most clichéd slow motions (like the ones during the final battle). Score is rather bland and the song during the ending credits fits the movie amazingly poorly.
What else? Well, despite my partially negative review I actually enjoyed the movie. It's way above the Gladiator and about as good as Braveheart (comparing it to movies that seem to appear in most of the reviews anyway). 7/10