Movie Thoughts: Ao: The Last Hunter (2010)

• Released: April 1, 2010
  
• Directed by: Jacques Malaterre
• Running time: 1h 24min
• Rating 2/5

Synopsis

After his clan is murdered, a lone Neanderthal goes to look for his long lost twin brother. Along the way he is joined by a pregnant Cro-Magnon.

My Thoughts

I am kind-of into most media which take place in an paleolithic setting, particularly those surrounding early humans or the animals which lived back when. So this movie looked kind of promising to me. Hey, we got a Neanderthal fighting a polar bear on the poster, that looks cool right?

Unfortunately the final product is not very good. It felt a bit awkward and lacking in execution. While the story of a lone hunter (who later turns out to be the last Neanderthal) traveling across ancient Eurasia looking for his long lost brother sounds interesting, the execution here was rather boring. I also didn't find Ao to be a very compelling or likable character to follow. He is our hero, but despite the movie starting out with his entire tribe being slaughtered my sympathy for the character died pretty soon after we meet the Cro-Magnon woman (Aki), where Ao starts to form a rather unhealthy bond with her (which we're eventually supposed to see as wholesome) and becomes kind of creepily obsessed with her baby because he thinks the soul of his own baby reincarnated into this new one that Aki bore. 

But the absolute worst part is when, despite Ao's and Aki's bond already being a bit unhealthy and weird (not because they're different species, but simply because of their unhealthy interactions), there is literally a scene where Ao, our hero, tries to rape Aki. And to make things worse, despite this leading to a quick split of the duo, Aki soon starts to miss him and later meets up with him again and they become a couple. 

What...what message is that even supposed to send? "Forgive your attempted rapist?" There is literally no reason why Aki should be liking Ao, he's just kind of in general a creep and now he literally tried to rape her and Aki is still just okay with being together with him again. They even become a couple. Just...rather messed up. And for your main character you probably don't want to have them be an attempted rapist, if you want your audience to root for them (which this movie is trying to do). Just saying.

The rest of the movie isn't much better. While there are a few exciting scenes it was largely boring and visually uninteresting to me. The fight scenes involving real animals (such as the one with the polar bear) look fake and rushed. The prosthetics on the Neanderthals also look fake and like they were just glued on. At no part did I look and Ao and really get the idea that "this is a Neanderthal". I was just constantly taken out of the movie thinking "this is a guy with bad prosthetics TRYING to look like a Neanderthal".

There's also a scene involving prehistoric wild horses (tarpans) but because for whatever reason the crew of this film couldn't get actual horses which probably resembled tarpans (e.g. Koniks, Prezwalski's) they went with the baffling choice of using Fjords, complete with perfectly straight human-cut manes. Was...was it that hard to get some horses who even loosely resemble wild horses? Even Fjords with long manes could've worked, but the fact that they went with these perfectly cut manes again just takes me out of the film because it gives us the impression somehow somewhere some cavemen spend their time cutting off these horses' manes until they were in a perfectly straight line. Very distracting choice in horse breeds.

I did like that the movie has its own unique language (sans a French narration by Ao's and Aki's inner voices), it definitely made the thing a bit more authentic-feeling than if they'd spoken any modern language.

But again, despite this being a good choice that doesn't stop the movie from being visually not very appealing and the story being largely boring. With a creepy asshat as a main character. Thumbs down from me. It's not the worst movie I've seen by a long shot but it's a far leap from actually being good.