I had an epiphany while watching PATHFINDER that I must confess may not be the most politically correct line of thought there is but I can't help but feel the way I do. Folks, I'm just sick to death of constantly seeing Indians portrayed as a lot of nature-loving Deepak Chopra's. I fully realize that for the longest time Indians were portrayed on the screen as violent savages that heroic white people had to round up and kill, but now the opposite cliché has become just as tiresome. I'm just bored to tears with Yoda-like shaman, the chief's hot daughter who falls for the white man that comes to choose them over his own people, the chieftain who makes the noble sacrifice, vision quests, faith-healing sessions, lectures about respecting the land and finding inner peace, the whole nine yards... Surely you understand what I'm getting here? We've gone from seeing a race of people and their culture portrayed in the media in an extremely negative light only to being portrayed in such an idealized, almost Utopian light that it's become its own annoying stereotype. Surely these people were far more complex than the either/or bloodthirsty savage/New Age spiritualist archetypes that they're portrayed as in the media. Or maybe the real problem here is that this lousy movie feels like it was made by people that learned everything they know about the original Americans from watching every post-DANCES WITH WOLVES movie about them?

Likewise, the Vikings in PATHFINDER are themselves clichéd lot: all looking like Molly Hatchet album covers come to life, and such a bland band of barbarians that they could just as easily have been the Jun Horde from BEASTMASTER and not Vikings of historical record. They're just hairy, filthy, boisterous, murderous bad guys with swords and maces and shields.

PATHFINDER represents a clash of civilizations between two civilizations stripped of anything that made their civilization interesting to begin with. It's only appropriate that this film is set several centuries prior to Christopher Columbus discovering the new world since if any movie has ever proved the flat earth theory it would be this one. Good lord is PATHFINDER ever flat!

A Native American (then technically just a native) woman discovers a Viking ship that has crashed into the New World (then technically just a different world). The Viking crew is dead except for a young boy that she then adopts and raises to be one of her tribe. Some twenty plus years later, a new group of Vikings arrive and the barbaric savages begin slaughtering the noble savages. The Viking boy grown into a native warrior finds himself torn between two worlds and, ultimately, the only one who can save the noble savages that have adopted him from the savage savages from which he came.

The young Viking boy who grows into a proud native comes to be named Ghost. The name Ghost is significant only because I do believe he's the only character in the entire film that has a name. The end credits are fascinating, learning all these other characters in the movie actually had names, none of which are ever spoken. The only other character we know a name for is the old man called the Pathfinder and that's not an actual name but a title for the tribal elder. We also know the Pathfinder's daughter to be the Pathfinder's daughter because, after all, she is the Pathfinder's daughter. The end credits reveal her name to have been Starfire - news to me.

Adult Ghost is out hunting when the next batch of Norsemen arrives and waste no time slaughtering the people of his village. When he returns, the Vikings are befuddled by this local savage with a different skin tone from the rest. Fortunately, Ghost has kept up with his sword practice over the years so that unlike the natives with their wooden staffs he knows how to kick some Nordic ass. This leads the Vikings to chase him through the woods and prompts the Viking leader (an unrecognizable Clancy Brown doing a half-assed Kurgan impression) to declare that this young man must be a Norseman himself because he's familiar with their ways. Not sure how he determined this guy to be of Viking heritage just by the manner which the young man hauls ass through the woods, but who wants to argue with a Viking?

Ghost, though badly wounded by an arrow wound to the back, manages to snowboard to safety on a Viking shield and eventually stumbles unconscious into the welcoming confines of a nearby village where the Pathfinder heals his wounds and the Pathfinder's daughter (actress/model Moon Bloodgood, whose real-life name sounds like a Native American horror movie hostess) finds herself so instantly attracted to the handsome stranger that I honestly thought for one moment that she was going to start humping his unconscious body. The Vikings are in pursuit and now they've vowed to slaughter every native man, woman, and child they come across because that's what Vikings do. Ghost will wake up and give the villagers a speech about how they're no match for Viking weaponry and the village is promptly evacuated. The villagers go one way and Ghost goes another with plans to lure the Vikings into a trap.

Somewhere in between getting healed by the shaman and the village being evacuated I got the feeling PATHFINDER needed to borrow a page from GRINDHOUSE and put a "REEL MISSING" slide up on the screen. Something definitely got lost or edited out of this story. For starters, when did Ghost and the Pathfinder's daughter fall in love? She'll follow him to where he's planning the ambush and give him a speech about every man having a battle between love and hate in their heart to which he'll begin caressing her face and staring at her longingly. Okay, I realize she fell in lust with him the very second she saw him, but when exactly did he fall for her? Was it while he was unconscious because that's pretty much the only other time they shared a screen together prior to this scene? This conversation is the really the first time they've ever spoken to one another and suddenly they're passionately in love.

And what's with the sidekick all of a sudden? Ghost tries to head off on his own alone but this one young brave insists on following him like a groupie. Ghost repeatedly yells at the guy to not follow yet gives up after a brief while. The next time they'll have any sort of interaction with one another will be when the young brave gets fatally wounded and a sad-faced Ghost comforts him like they're good buddies. Who the hell was that guy? Why did he insist on following Ghost? Why did Ghost care if he lived or died? Why should we care if he lived or died?

I realize that PATHFINDER has spent a good deal of time on the studio shelf awaiting a long delayed release (it has already been released in many other parts of the world) so I'm thinking that the studio knew they had a stinker on their hands as it is and decided to do some judicious editing to strip the movie down even more so. It appeared to be pretty shallow to begin with, but now it's just plain vapor, not a trace of substance to be found anywhere. Also, I'm fairly certain that most of the trailers for this movie showed a brief snippet of a love scene between Ghost and the Pathfinder's daughter, a scene that does not exist in the movie I watched.

The rest of the film will have Ghost, the Pathfinder, and the Pathfinder's daughter getting captured. Despite Ghost's assurances that the natives are no match for the Vikings, the three of them alone seemed to hold their own fairly well before finally being subdued. Then again, no matter how many Vikings Ghost kills, afterwards there always seems to be even more than there were before. The Pathfinder, naturally, will provide the mandatory noble sacrifice (but not before emboldening Ghost with some wise parting words) and then Ghost will agree to lead the Vikings to the other neighboring villages in exchange for no harm coming to the Pathfinder's daughter. For some reason the Viking leader thinks that Ghost is coming around to returning to his Viking heritage even though he has no logical reason to believe so, and, of course, that's not the case at all. Ghost is really just leading them on a wild goose chase to buy time until he finds just the right moment to strike, preferably on a snowy mountainside prone to avalanches.

PATHFINDER's tale draws many comparisons to LAST OF THE MOHICANS; the biggest being saying something along the lines of, "Compared to LAST OF THE MOHICANS, PATHFINDER really sucked." The two biggest aspects to LAST OF THE MOHICANS were the love story and the "man torn between two worlds" inner conflict. I think I've already made it clear that the love story aspect of PATHFINDER is a dud, especially when you have a love story between two characters that leaves you with no clue why they're in love other than plot necessity, and the "man torn between two worlds" aspect is a complete non-starter as well since there's never any doubt whose side Ghost is on. Heck, the Pathfinder and his daughter keep lecturing Ghost about not giving into the vengeance in his heart that he actively seeks, but even that falls by the wayside since Ghost's actions seem a heck of a lot more out a necessary evil to save the outmatched natives than a matter of personal revenge.

Another major reason for the complete failing of the dramatic elements of the story is lead actor Karl Urban (LOTR, DOOM) giving a performance so devoid of screen presence that I'll be shocked if he doesn't find his acting career relegated to the realm of direct-to-DVD after this debacle. If Urban doesn't have at least a Razzie nomination for worst actor awaiting him at the end of this year then the Razzies just need to close up shop. The man is a complete blank slate, facially and emotionally, from start to finish and that's even worse here given how limited his dialogue is. I swear the mask from V FOR VENDETTA could out-emote him. Sure, Urban physically looks the part, but that's all he brings to the role. Just give him some blonde hair and he'd be ready for a starring role in a live action version of Thundarr the Barbarian; though Hollywood would probably screw that up too by casting Rob Schneider or Bernie Mac as a wisecracking Ookla the Mok.

So that leaves us with the action scenes. The marketers have actually had the voiceover guy announce at the end of the TV spots for the film that PATHFINDER is "Rated R for strong brutal violence throughout" in what may very well be the most desperate last ditch attempt to draw people into theaters I've seen short of having him say, "Go see PATHFINDER and we'll send you a check for $20." They're clearly trying to draw in the people that came away from 300 impressed with that film's over-the-top bloodlust. PATHFINDER is no 300.

I realized while watching the action scenes in PATHFINDER that say what you will about the excessive use of slow motion in 300, at least you could make out what was going on during those action sequences. PATHFINDER director Marcus Nispel, he of the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake and a graduate of the Michael Bay Film Institute, where he earned doctorates in washed out color tones and rapid-fire editing, renders damn near every single action scene a disorienting mess from which you often cannot make out what the hell is going on. Whatever you may think of 300 overall as a movie, if it finally puts an end to incomprehensible actions scenes made that so via split-second music video editing and overwrought shaky cam cinematography then it was worth it.

Simply put, PATHFINDER is the epitome of a lame. The story is lame, the characters are lame, the acting is lame, and the action is lame. L-A-M-E from start to finish! That's a damn shame because I went into this thing starving for a good Viking movie. Has there ever been a good Viking movie because I'm drawing a blank? We're definitely overdo for one, that's for sure.

One final mystery I never understood: the Native Americans keep referring to the Vikings as the "dragon people." How would natives with no exposure to the outside world in 10th century North America even know what in the heck a dragon is?