#81 The Conqueror (Wes)

The Conqueror

I’ve never liked John Wayne. I don’t like his westerns and I don’t like his war movies. I’m sure you can imagine my delight at having to watch a John Wayne movie about the early life of Genghis Khan then. I really hate to judge something before I’ve watched it, but I knew this was going to be terrible even before I pressed play.

John Wayne (played by Marion Morrison) stars as Temujin, a Mongol chief who later becomes known as the warlord Genghis Khan. He falls for Bortai (Susan Heyward), daughter of the Tartar leader, whom he captures in a raid. This starts a war and eventually Bortai is rescued and the Tartars capture Temujin himself. By this point though Bortai has fallen for Temujin and helps him escape. Temujin eventually must overcome his enemies (including the amusingly titled Wang Khan) and become one of the most savage warlords to ever walk the Earth.

So here’s the question I was asking myself throughout this movie: Why couldn’t we have seen a story about his later life? Genghis Khan had a fascinating life. Marching through Central Asia, into Eastern Europe, Russia and the Middle East, he founded the Mongol Empire and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people doing it. This sounds like it would be a much more interesting story than his rise to power. Wouldn’t it?

Well maybe, but Mongol: The Rise to Power of Genghis Khan proved that this story can make a good movie. OK, so the writers apparently went to the Mel Gibson School of Historical Accuracy, but it’s still an entertaining film. Unfortunately The Conqueror just isn’t.

Clocking in at just under two hours watching John Wayne play Temujin in his usual Southern drawl is just painful (almost as embarrassing as Wayne’s Fu Manchu moustache). He seems to have less range than a North Korean nuclear missile. I know that The Simpsons character Troy McClure was based loosely on Doug McClure and Troy Donahue, but watching this movie was like watching a real-life Troy McClure in action.

Of course the dreadful dialogue doesn’t help. How can anyone take a movie seriously that contains the lines “My son has won the world. Still he must conquer that red-headed Jezebel.” and “She is a woman, much woman. Should her perfidy be less than that of other women?” Wayne never was very good at speaking his lines anyway, but give him some cod-Shakespeare and it’s like watching a dog trying to say “sausages’ whilst chewing on a toffee.

The other thing that really stopped me taking this movie seriously, was the choice to film all the outside scenes in Utah. I’ve never been to Mongolia or China, but I’m quite sure that its resemblance to the Mojave Desert is nominal at best. In fact when you’re watching a film about Genghis Khan and all you expect is a tribe of Ute Indians to ride around the corner it becomes slightly off putting. Imagine you were making a new Robin Hood movie and you decided that the Sherwood Forest scenes could easily be filmed in the Amazon rainforest. It really looks that ridiculous.

Now add to this some excruciatingly embarrassing indoors scenes and you have one hell of a bad movie. Susan Heywards sword dance is so clunky that you can’t help but think getting C3PO to dance with a sword would be more erotic. To make matters worse for Heyward, Slyvia Lewis also performs a temple dance that is extremely well done, and makes you think that she would have been a much better leading lady (although like in many movies in which she dances, Lewis is left uncredited).

The love story between Temujin and Bortai lacks any emotional depth, and could have been played better by two Pan Am air stewardesses. In fact I’m sure that the love story between Anakin Skywalker and Padme in Attack of the Clones was based on this, as both feature wooden actors playing opposite otherwise talented actresses who merely seem to be going through the motions.

For an action-adventure movie this seems to lack in both action and adventure. I’ve always had a problem watching overly long westerns (and have no doubts, this is just a western without guns set in Mongolia), as apart from Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy and The Wild Bunch I usually find them hard to concentrate on. This film was no exception and I found my attention waning throughout.

Unlike Genghis Khan this is one movie that never had any chance of world domination. If you ever get asked if you want to watch this, then my best advice would be to run to the hills as though the Mongol hoards really were fast approaching.