Ao, le dernier Néandertal (2010) User Reviews

When Ao meets Aki or the oldest romantic comedy ever told

[guy-bellinger · 7/10 · 11 October 2010]

Jacques Malaterre, a maker of TV fiction (mainly TV films and series episodes), discovered prehistory and more generally speaking - the history of man - when he was chosen to direct the highly successful documentary "L'odyssée de l'espèce" (2003). He was so captivated by the matter he was assigned to explore that he gradually became a specialist of the subject himself. With the help of famed paleoanthropologist Yves Coppens as a co-writer and scientific adviser he also directed "Homo Sapiens" (2005) and "Le sacre de l'homme" (2009). So it is hardly surprising to see him further explore his favorite subject in a new work, the difference this time being that he has chosen the big screen to express himself in preference to television.

"Ao, le dernier Neandertal", which illustrates the thesis (confirmed by recent discoveries based on DNA analysis) that some Neandertal and Homo Sapiens had offspring together) undoubtedly benefits from this change of scope, which does not mean that it is the best in Malaterre's four-installment saga. Very spectacular indeed, the film has epic qualities when it comes to Ao's struggle for survival in all weather conditions, aesthetic assets when it describes the beauty and cruelty of nature of wild life. And actor Simon Paul Sutton is very believable as Ao, the desperate creature who sees all the members of his clan die around him, managing to express his feelings mostly through looks, grunts and body language. Which is some kind of a feat. Last but not least is the creation of a consistent specific language (that the viewer does not understand with the exception of one or two words). Too bad then that Malaterre resorted to a commentary in modern language to explain exactly what happens. Jean-Jacques Annaud had been able to do without such an expedient in his amazing "Guerre du feu".

On the other hand, for all the modernity of its scientific approach, the film is nothing else but a boy meets girl story, complete with the usual clichés: boy and girl don't get on/ love is born/ and they live happily ever after. Worse, the female lead, Aruna Shields, is too pretty to be true. Luckily, her acting is good, which partly compensates for the initial mistake, but you need a good dose of suspension of disbelief to really come into this aspect of the story.

Despite this weak point, "Ao" remains worth watching. Even if a few details leave to be desired, you really feel you are living a long long time ago constantly asking yourself whether YOU could have survived in such a hostile environment. This is enough to justify the price of your movie ticket, I think.

Unusual movie about Neanderthals versus Homo Sapiens; see it with an open mind

[Andy-296 · 7/10 · 19 December 2011]

We are in Europe, 30,000 years before the present. Ao (British actor Simon Sutton, under heavy makeup), is the last of the Neanderthals (he belong to the last surviving clan, and escaped from being massacred along them by a bunch of Homo Sapiens). He is now on the run, and in his flight, he takes as companion a beautiful Homo Sapiens girl named Aki (the beautiful Aruna Shields, a petite who appears in this film topless most of the time) who is fleeing with her baby for some unspecified reason. Against all odds, Ao and Aki would have some sort of interspecies romance (scientists have recently found that there was some interbreeding between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens).

Any film that deals with prehistoric man (not that there many of them), is almost inevitably going to have some ridiculous scenes, and this is not exception. But this French movie (by renowned documentary filmmaker Jacques Malaterre) is able to hold our interest. The beautiful wintry locations where this was shot (in France and Bulgaria) certainly helps.

Fails exactly at where it aims

[mani-nanna-650-157348 · 5/10 · 9 April 2011]

The movie is about last of the Neanderthals, named Ao, who after loosing all his clan ventures back from Siberia to Southern Europe where he came from, to find his brother, Oa.

The film is set in pretty much realistic environment and the main guy is believable Neanderthal, though maybe little bit softer at heart, than we imagine Neanderthals would be.

We see realistic scene of his ugly Neanderthal wife giving birth to child. Realistic scene of Ao and his mate fighting bear and so on... So we prepare ourself to dig deeper into movie with documentaristic approach, we are going to see prehistoric life of humans and Neanderthals but after Ao's departure from Siberia and his first meeting with humans, the problems start.

Giving that the action scenes of the movie aren't all that impressive, the love theme is not so original, there is little drama or tension that can capture your attention, it would be smartest thing to continue the movie in only available way to make it stand-out and original - I mean, making it as realistic, as possible and while it started good in that direction, it failed miserably very soon.

Ao meets human girl who has the appearance of top-model, apparently shaves her legs and armpits and is just too damn sexy and unbelievable for all her surrounding people and nature.

From that moment we get cliché-driven, stupid love-escape story with predictable end. Good bye realism... good bye exploring of prehistoric life... good bye the most interesting part of the movie.

I understand that it's NOT documentary and director has all the right to soften the harsh prehistoric world, but it's just too much.

This could be worse if girl couldn't act. Fortunately she can, and does it pretty good actually, but alas, she can't save the movie.

This kind of cinematography could have success in only one case, but somewhere along the production director went the very wrong way.

Overall, mediocre film

An interesting glimpse into the distant past

[MattyGibbs · 7/10 · 2 December 2014]

Ao. The Last Hunter is a story about a Neanderthal hunter who following the death of his wife and child and with disease ravaging his clan leaves to find his birthplace.

Along the way his path clashes with Homo Sapiens and in particular a heavily pregnant young girl and her baby. An unlikely bond grows between the two as they journey south whilst being chased by a tribe they escape from.

The story of the film is simple but it's strength lies in the great depiction of our distant ancestors. Obviously no-one knows for sure if Neanderthals ever even met Homo Sapiens but I like to think that this is a pretty accurate depiction of life in that time. The make up artists certainly did wonders transforming the lead actor into looking like a Neanderthal.

It is beautifully filmed with some great scenery and it seems like a lot of research was done prior to filming as it goes someway to debunking a few Neanderthal myths.

If you're on the look out for something a bit different and have any interest in prehistoric life then this is well worth watching.

Not too bad, though a little obvious.

[Rob_Taylor · 6/10 · 8 November 2012]

I actually quite enjoyed this movie even though, for the first ten minutes or so, I was hating it with a passion. So why the change of heart? Well, first off, the movie is without speech of any meaningful kind at all. The prehistoric people do have languages, but you can't understand any of it. It's not a big deal, since the scenes do a pretty good job of "showing, not telling" as they play out. The plot is fairly simple as well, so you are never really in much doubt what is going on.

But here's where the problems I experienced in the first ten minutes come in. Even though it is essentially speech-free, there is just the worst documentary-style narration going on at times. You're probably saying this isn't too bad. But trust me, you have to hear it to understand why I hated it so much.

The narrator reads his dialogue like he's just been informed his entire family has died in an automobile accident. Flat, uninterested and with all the liveliness of a cymbal-clapping, monkey toy that's had its batteries removed.

Without exception, its the worst delivered narration I've ever heard. It sucks you right out of the action and sets your nerves on edge. You want to scream at the screen for him to stop. To shut up. To let you enjoy the movie. But he never does.

Thankfully, the narration is heaviest near the start. It becomes sparser and more spaced out as the movie goes along and you even forget about it at times. Then, out of the blue, up it will pop to spoil your enjoyment for a few seconds.

Why they thought it would be a good idea I don't know. The story is easy enough to follow without it. They could have at least got someone who wasn't a secret fan of The Smiths to read it.

Despite the talk-over, the film is enjoyable, if predictable all the way through. The only unpredictable thing about it is guessing when Captain Monotone will pop-up to depress you with his stagnant narration!

SUMMARY: Might be worth watching with the sound turned down for the first few minutes. Worth watching, even with the dire and unnecessary exposition.

An attempt to unravel the mysterious disappearance of an entire species some 30,000 years ago – the Neanderthal.

[YasheshJ · 7/10 · 14 May 2013]

AO, The Last Neanderthal is set around the last days of the Neanderthal. Most of them are dying of a strange illness – which actually is a result of increase in global temperature and other climatic changes.

Homo-Sapiens is a young species thriving in the new changing climate. Some of them are even killing scattered Neanderthals.

Ao (Simon Paul), a Neanderthal, is leader of a small nomadic clan. He is a fierce hunter but together with his clan lives in harmony with surrounding nature and animals. As a rule, Neanderthals only take from nature what can be easily replenished.

While Ao is away, a group of Homo-Sapiens murders his entire clan along with his wife and newborn daughter Nea. Ao soon hunts down the killers but can't bring himself to kill them as he isn't a murderer.

All alone now, Ao journeys across Europe in search of his home, and brother from whom he was separated in his youth--a tradition where Neanderthal clans exchange their young ones to maintain peace.

In his long journey he is given the snub by most he meets due to his ape-like features, and is feared for his colossal strength. He is captured by a Homo-Sapiens tribe where he falls in love with a Homo-Sapien woman, Aki (Aruna Shields) who is pregnant. Aki has been imprisoned by her clan for sacrifice. Ao helps Aki and sees Nia in her newborn.

Ao fights for his survival, and to protect his loved ones. With help of Aki's herbology he even overcomes the strange illness. He wants to take the cure to his brother as well and finally reaches home only to realize his brother and entire clan has already been consumed by the illness.

Ao realizes he is probably the only one of his kind left. Aki along with her daughter Nea decide to live with Ao, away from other quarreling clans. Ao interacts with nature and animals -- he can understand what 'wind' says and on his wail wild mares come out to feed a hungry human child. He is happy that Neanderthal ways will live-on through Nea.

In the end movie puts up a very valid question – How long will Homo-Sapiens survive or are we the end of evolution? It is a low budget movie and at times camera even dwindles a bit (e.g. Ao's fight with Polar bear scene). Though overall camera-work is very commendable and beautifully captures a 30,000 years old Europe. Make artist have done a great job and narration is fair.

Despite a promising plot director fails to capture your imagination for long, and acting at best is average.

Watch it if you enjoy prehistoric period movies.

6.7/10

Great prehistoric trappings but why romance?

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 23 September 2016]

AO: THE LAST HUNTER is the latest in a line of prehistoric epics. These films seemed to originate with the cheesy back-projected movies of the 1940s before Hammer had a mini resurgence of them in the 1960s with ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. and its follow-ups. They were back in the 1980s with the likes of the influential QUEST FOR FIRE, but since then the genre has been a little quiet.

This film is French and unsurprisingly for the French it plays out as a love story for the most part. The hero is a wandering Neanderthal hunter who meets up with a woman who just so happens to be a Homo Sapien. The two fall in love, but not before the surprisingly modern plot elements play out. And that's the main problem with AO: it feels very modern in places, particularly with a modern-language voice over narration which really feels out of place, and the usual gender issues which would play out on a modern romantic comedy.

As a film, this does have a fair few strengths. The visual look is strong with fine cinematography bringing to life the snowbound terrain. The effects are strong and the look of the Neanderthals is an authentic one. There are some truly exciting moments, like the polar bear fight. It's so unfortunate, then, that most of the running time is wasted with romantic nonsense, when the director had the change to make something so much more profound.

Certainly out on a Prehistoric limb.

[RatedVforVinny · 8/10 · 24 May 2019]

Really a fascinating French film, concerning a Neanderthal man and his relationship with a really attractive (more advanced) species. A very difficult movie to pull off and with any degree of emotion and sensitivity but 'The Last Hunter' is very well pieced together, nicely paced and with some cool action sequence. Anyone expecting loads of prehistoric beasts will ultimately be disappointed but 'Ao' is so much more. A touching, alternative love story.

Brutal but very possibly accurate

[remitomsa · 7/10 · 27 January 2020]

First of all , the narration ruins everything. From the first scene . The film then seems to be a documentary . Not anything else . Maybe it was intended so but still they could have found a better voice too. More cinematic . Too bad for the money . The lead Ao is great as performance but Aki is a bit ''too much '' in her performance. The director seems to not see this . Two . For this kind of money they could get much better cinematography . Which is a big part of any movie . (See Alpha 2018 ) . The story is interesting and brilliant at times though . Three. Music ,again , for this money is bad too . Sound seems to be good enough though. Anyway ,it shows why the movie didn't make money . And it feels too unreal at times too. I guess the director wanted a lot of accuracy of the era but then again we can't know exactly how they lived back then . We never will . Worth watching anyway . Cheers!

Just when I thought I'd seen them all

[walkingwithprimeval · 6/10 · 20 March 2022]

Just when I thought there wasn't any of this type of escapism entertainment left for my consumption, I find out about Ao: The Last Hunter (2010), a perfectly satisfactory supplement for my immense craving of non-fictionalised caveman-related culture (as in, how their real-life society actually once was). After going on an epic primal journey for sheer savage survival in Quest for Fire (1981), taking a look at inter-species tensions in The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986), witnessing a literal train-wreck in 10,000 BC (2008) and learning how we bonded with primitive hunting dogs from wolf domestication in Alpha (2018), how does this film stack-up against all these other ones? In short, it's just ever so slightly above average. Sooner or later, I thought filmmakers would've eventually hit a creative slump by always confining a majority of these caveman movies in a nondescript region of prehistoric Europe and having them take place during the last major Ice Age. But nope, they still somehow managed to incorporate this specific geological time period into yet another solid adventure film with a strong narrative focus.

This film's story starts out like any other for the genre, in the average ordinary life of a Neanderthal man who's being a good provider for his tribe's people by heading out on hunting-gathering quests. On top of all that, he recently became a doting father after his loyal mate gives birth (aw!). However, a sudden unprecedented attack on his people results in the genocidal slaughtering of his family (including his newborn child). This uncalled for assault was calculated by a scouting-party of cruel Cro-Magnon hunters that happened to stumble across the nearby hideout spot at their cave's entrance, which just goes to shows that even back then (thousands and thousands of years ago) there were very unjust conflicts between different human races for no apparent reason; other than the obvious fact that they were different. In the shocking aftermath of this brutally traumatic act which has fallen upon his once peaceful and disrupted lifestyle, not all is calm for his now scarred psyche as he contemplates about traversing back to the previous homeland of his old life (wherein his original family roots lie) whilst seething in a depressed state-of-mind. The movie does a nice job at chronicling this lonesome individual's odyssey on his exhaustingly long trek, navigation his way through the desolate mountainous valleys; all of which leads to some misadventures when he bumps into yet another tribal group, one that's more advanced but seemingly less-hostile. Will he have difficulty getting on with these strangers, or will things turn out alright for the poor fella in the end? (you'll just have to go and watch it for yourself to find out).

The scenery isn't anything superb and it's far from a showcase of stunning visuals, but the cinematography nonetheless gets the job done of being effective enough to keep one's attention (on a certain level, that is). I'm not entirely sure if the director watched Quest for Fire to do prep work for this movie, but in any case it greatly adheres to that film in-particular by having the same style of presentation, even more so than something like Clan of the Cave Bear. Also, even though the film doesn't have much to offer when it comes to prehistoric beasts, I'll forgive its lack of them for understandable reasons (mostly budgetary limitations). Something I really like and admire about all these types of movies is the fact that no matter where you are in the world (whether that be Western America or Eastern Asia, for example), the simple stories are still understandable and most of all you're still able to follow them quite easily without the aide of subtitles; thanks to the actors' facial-expressions, hand-gestures, body-movements and vocal-grunts. It's basically like a universal language that almost all of us can relate to, at least to some mild degree. No matter what dialect you may speak or what country you live in, it's inclusive to literally everyone on a worldwide scale. I'm sure it was no easy task on the performers' part because in order to pull this off and make it as convincing as possible, they had to arduously master the dying art of silent acting (a most impressive feat indeed).

Now then, on to a few of my nitpicks with the film's more technical aspects. Some of the compositing shots weren't very convincing, like the bear fight with Ao earlier on in the movie and a bison stampede he's trying to get clear from at some point later on (NOT a major story spoiler). The compositing in both of these sequences make the scenes feel slightly awkward to watch, because your brain's constantly alerting you to the fact that it's pretty obvious the two completely separate shots don't match-up perfectly together (they're not aligned properly, in other words). When you see the two aforementioned sequences for yourself, you'll notice how the scenes in question can be kind of disorienting at minor points with their rapid-fire editing, only making them last on-screen for a fraction of a few seconds at most. My guess is that they knew these already shot scenes didn't turn-out so well and I'm only assuming there was no time to reschedule for some major reshoots with alternate takes, which would most definitely explain why the editors frequently made the quick-cut edits in the way that they did as to compress the duration of the scenes' length down by just a bit. I'd say a little more superimposing work was needed to be done in order to make these loosely-edited scenes come-off less disjointed and appear more in-synchronisation with one another.

So all in all, I thought Ao: The Last Hunter was pretty darn good. The only slight negative I'd give this is that it's yet another one of these prehistorical adventure films that's set in Palaeolithic Europe, for the billionth time. I suppose it's because these filmmakers don't want to deviate or stray too far from this tried-and-tested formula. It's almost as if they're making a conscious effort on their part to play-it-safe by going down the conventional route and staying away from anything that'd be considered too niche for the mainstream public. Quest for Fire and Alpha were also set in Palaeolithic Europe, two quintessential crowning achievements I hold in high-regard as being a couple of the greatest, most authentic caveman motion-pictures ever conceived by modern mankind. But just for once, it'd be nice to see an ancient period piece that isn't confined to this one certain pre-historical location. Often times I keep thinking back to Missing Link (1988), which tackled the primordial beginnings of our extremely ancient ancestors in Pliocene Africa. With that movie, they were adventurous and willing to take a chance by setting their film's story elsewhere. In my mind, I can perfectly envisage an epic prehistorical film set in the Pleistocene Epoch of either North America, Asia or Australia. I really think there's a lot of untapped potential to be had with those overlooked ideas, having endless story possibilities.

Krog Like Eye Makeup

[UltraMaximal · 1/10 · 16 January 2021]

Perfect dentistry and cosmetics galore in the land before time.