This is not the Genghis Khan of Western popular imagination, but a warrior hero defending Mongolia from invasion; any bloody acts are either forced upon him or wrongly attributed while he's up to something perfectly wholesome, like helping his men in the forge. The initial set-up promises much, suggesting that an explanation for his behaviour lies in a world of omens, curses, shamans and superstition in which the god of heaven, Tengri himself (set up in opposition to the Christian God), has chosen Temüjin for greatness. All this is swiftly forgotten, however, as the emphasis shifts to oaths of kinship and cycles of revenge, and the action disintegrates into interminable scenes of hairy men in big hats putting other hairy men in big hats to the sword. With no dramatic peaks to beckon you on through the fields of dead and dying bodies, the Mongolian steppe has never seemed so flat and endless.