Solomon Kane (2009)

Movie Info

So…what can I do to get my soul back?

Solomon Kane (James Purefoy) is a man with a haunted past.  Living in the shadow of his favored, spoiled brother Marcus (Samuel Roukin), Kane fled after accidentally killing him.  Turning to a life of a mercenary, Solomon Kane learns that his sins have damned him.  When he meets a Puritan family headed to the New World, Kane contemplates a different life.  The family is attacked the girl Meredith (Rachel Hurd-Wood) is stolen away.  Solomon Kane is out to rescue Meredith and find peace for himself…but his past might return to haunt him.

This is a pretty uncomfortable mask…

Directed by Michael J. Bassett, Solomon Kane is based on the character created by Robert E. Howard.  The movie faced tons of production problems, and remained “in the can” for quite a while before being released in 2009 in Europe and was not released in the United States until 2013.  The movie was met with moderately positive reviews.

Solomon Kane was an odd character.  He was created by Conan the Barbarian’s creator Robert E. Howard for Weird Tales (August 1928) and predates Howard’s much more popular Conan character which appeared in 1932.  Solomon Kane had many pulp adventures through the years himself and even appeared in comic books at the same time Conan was making his stake in pop culture.  I was quite excited for a Solomon Kane movie, and I found I had to wait and wait for it to reach the U.S.

Burn, demon, burn!

The story of Solomon Kane is a bit of hodgepodge of Solomon Kane type stories.  Solomon Kane often found himself wandering from place to place and battling demons that were preying on the innocents.  Here, it is presented as an origin story for the character and it feels like the real adventures will follow the movie.  I wish that the movie’s plot had taken more direction in a quicker way and had been a bit more focused.

James Purefoy gets a lot of credit for his performance as Kane, and he deserves it.  He gets the characters tone right…he’s sullen but there is still something heroic and likeable.  He looks right in the outfit and the fighting seems authentic.  He has some nice back-up from Max von Sydow playing his father and Pete Postlethwaite as the father of the kidnapped child.

Oh yeah, I rock this hat!

Visually, the movie suffers a little due to the lower budget.  Big special effects don’t seem big enough and the monsters that the movie do have aren’t used enough.  Kane often went into locations, battled a demon and then moved on in the story…I wish that there had been a bit more of this in the story with more crazy creatures.

Solomon Kane was meant to be the start of a franchise, but the problems of getting it released kind of helped doom that not from happening.  It is too bad because I’d love to see where Solomon goes from the end of this film and then I would have had my more wishes for the film…aka more creatures and monsters.  The story about an adventure with Puritan is a hard sell so I don’t think Solomon will ride again anytime soon.