The West Country Van Helsing

A strange thing happens a few minutes into watching Solomon Kane. From the mouth of James Purefoy, who portrays the rugged, battle-scarred anti-hero comes an unusual accent. Unusual in the cinematic sense, but not unusual in reality, for the accent in question is West Country, that of English counties Somerset and Devon. Now being from the West Country, and understanding that our accent is often associated with inbred simpletons, I was a little startled at the choice to portray Robert E Howard's badass in such a faithful way (I assumed Purefoy would be vocally assertive and plummy).

After that revelation settles in, you can settle down for a hugely enjoyable pulpy, swashbuckling adventure. It's great to see a mixing of the mystical and the medieval and done on a scale that allows for some big action set-pieces. You can see that it's filmed on a limited budget, but the film-makers have stretched their funds and structured their script to make every penny count. Solomon Kane looks authentic and gritty but embraces the sorcery elements without making them feel alien to the rest of the movie.

Purefoy is commanding as Kane, in a plot reminiscent of The Shadow where an evil warrior has a moment of clarity and renounces his evil ways. After he befriends a kindly family, including the suitably innocent looking Rachel Hurd Wood, they're attacked and (mostly) butchered by the forces of dark magician Malachi. Then it's off to Devon to his troubled childhood home to confront the evil and save the girl.

The action is well staged, the cast are fine (including Jason Fleming, Max Von Sydow, Alice Krige, Mackenzie Crook and Pete Postlesthwaite)and the story fast paced and exciting. On the downside, there's some overly familiar elements. Klaus Badelt's score rips of Hans Zimmer's King Arthur themes (but it's a damn good score to rip off anyway and works well in this context), Solomon himself looks too much like Hugh Jackman's Van Helsing half the time and the climatic, satanic monster is a little too Balrogy for my liking.

But these are only small criticisms in an good, old fashioned historic, fantasy adventure. Catch this if you can because Hawk The Slayer, this is not.