Pathfinder is available on DVD this last week of July 2007. MaryAnn took a look at Pathfinder back in April, and while she was a bit annoyed with a jarring anachronism that didn't jibe with the Viking-era film, she still thought it was a must-see:

I'm looking for any excuse to talk about Pathfinder, which is so much more intriguing than I ever expected it would be, given the disdain with which the film has been treated by 20th Century Fox, and I want folks to know that if you like movies like 300 or The 13th Warrior (another woefully underappreciated flick), then you need to check out Pathfinder, cuz I think you'll get a kick out of it. It's not Citizen Kane -- it's not even 300 -- but it's worth your time.

And the film gives me a chance to talk about one of my movie pet peeves. Now, I warn you, this is really picky, and I've never heard anyone else mention this, so it's entirely possible that I am the only person in the world who has even noticed this and that what I thought was a constant, low-level OCD is actually much worse and I should be medicated 24/7. So take all this with a grain of salt, and know that it's not something that impacts my enjoyment of movies one bit. It's just something that I can't help seeing.

It's this: There's a moment in Pathfinder when the camera zooms in on Karl Urban's face -- he's the star, playing the left-behind Viking boy adopted by Native Americans, like, a thousand years ago. Maybe it's in the middle of a battle scene, or something exciting and dramatic, I don't remember, but Karl's eyes, which are huge and beautiful and dreamy to start with, so you can't help but get lost in them, go wide, and with the camera right in his face, you can see that he's wearing contact lenses.

Okay, I could see that he's wearing contact lenses.

It's not like he's wearing FX lenses to turn his eyes super-Viking-blue or anything -- I guess he just needs his vision corrected. And you certainly don't want to deny an actor that: you don't want your star running into trees and stuff because he can't see where he's going. But maybe he could just take the lenses out for the close-ups so that snarky obessive-compulsives like me don't start wondering what amazing advances in opthamology the Native Americans had made that we don't know about.

Usually this kind of thing won't matter -- it's the historical and fantasy stories when this really jumps out at me. (King Theoden's death scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King? Bernard Hill is wearing contact lenses. He's lying on the ground dying -- what does he need to see?) Not that it really bothers me or anything. I just, you know, notice it.

But don't get me started on 19th-century genteel drawing room dramas in which the leading man clearly has a piercing hole in one ear. That's when I go ballistic.

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MaryAnn Johanson (email me)
reviews, reviews, reviews! at FlickFilosopher.com

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