Mongol
Starring: Tadanobu Asano, Khulan Chuluun, Amadu Mamadakov, Sun Honglei
Director: Sergei Bodrov
The film: Mongol is beautiful to watch, engrossing throughout and a fascinating story about Genghis Khan's rise to power. It's also everything one would expect from a large scale, big-budget period epic: scenes with hundreds of men on horseback racing into blood-soaked battle, the hero has to overcome many obstacles and his pursuit of true love is his only incentive.
The film was made in Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan by veteran Russian director Sergei Bodrov as the first part of a trilogy which has yet to be realised. At the outset, viewers are introduced to nine-year-old Temudgin (played by Odnyam Odsuren, right) in the year 1192 as he rides on horseback across the Mongolian plains with his father, who is taking him to a rival clan to meet his future bride and settle an old score. But before they get there, fate intervenes in the form of a young girl named Borte, who says he should be her husband. 'Little did I know that this would change my fate forever,' an older Temudgin says in his Mongolian voiceover. Later, his father is poisoned and young Temudgin has to fend for himself.
The film glosses over how he survives, though it is implied that he gets help from Tengri, God of the Blue Sky, who appears as a wolf. He also becomes blood brothers with Jamuhka (Sun Honglei), who will later feature as his main enemy over philosophical and power issues. During the next decade, Temudgin marries Borte, played with a tough feistiness by Khulan Chuluun, fights several battles and is jailed in a cell surrounded by a moat.