Very well executed

Awesome Movie

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Taras Bulba is directed by J. Lee Thompson and adapted to the screen by Waldo Salt and Karl Tunberg from a story by Nikolai Gogol. It stars Yul Brynner, Tony Curtis, Christine Kaufmann and Perry Lopez. Out of United Artists, it's a DeLuxe/Eastman Color/Panavision production, with the music scored by Franz Waxman and cinematography by Joseph MacDonald.Loosely based on Gogol's short novel, story tells of a Cossack uprising against the Polish forces who have taken control of the Ukraine. At the centre of the Cossack army is the leader Taras (Brynner) and his two sons, Andrei (Curtis) and Ostap (Lopez). But when Andrei falls in love with a Polish princess called Natalia (Kaufmann), it sets the wheels in motion for the Bulba family to crack from within; just as the Polish come calling asking for the Cossacks help to defeat the Turkish.While not as epic as the film, the troubled back story of the production is big enough to lend one to understand why Taras Bulba is not the grandiose picture the story deserves. Main problem comes with casting, particularly that of Curtis as the elder Bulba son. It should have been Burt Lancaster, who walked, so in came Curtis and a decision was made to put him front and centre of the picture. Thus rendering Brynner's title character to playing second fiddle, so much so they really should have called the film Andrei Bulba instead. On his day Curtis could act, but he's out of place here playing a Cossack with brain and brawn. Then there was the small matter of Curtis' marriage to Janet Leigh falling apart, with Leigh visiting the set, falling ill and no doubt noticing the sparks flying between Curtis and his delectable co-star, Kaufmann. Curtis would say it wasn't the final straw, but with him going on to marry Kaufman shortly after his divorce, it's hard not to think that it sealed the deal!He's not helped by the writers, though, who allow the love story sub-plot between Andrei and Natalia to form the core of the plot. They too, Messrs Salt & Tunberg, were brought in after historical novelist Howard Fast (Spartacus) refused to tone down the screenplay. He wanted to include what was an important part of the Cossack/Pole war, that of the Cossacks anti-Semitic attack on Polish Jews. The makers balked and Salt & Tunberg came in and delivered the Andrei overkill and some rather cheese laden dialogue. Brynner was crushed, his biography (written by his son Rock) reveals that it was a role and film he cared for more than any other, he had grand plans for the portrayal but the makers didn't share his view. A shame because what we do get of Brynner is wonderfully exuberant, muscular and (correctly) scene stealing.However, when Taras Bulba as a film is good, it's real good, and thankfully it's never dull, even if it's it a bit more jovial in the mid section than it is meant to be. Thompson was a fine director of action and suspense, and he gets to flex his muscles here to great effect. Casting aside the cheap shots of dummies and wooden horses being hurled about a couple of times, the sight of thousands of men on horseback swarming across the Steppes (actual location used was Argentina) is spectacular. The battles are fierce, violent and gripping, while the scenes in the Cossacks camps are joyous as men drink, sing, test their manhood by doing things like dangling over a bear pit, it's all very robust and Vikingesque, but entertainingly so. There's even some dashing sword play, while quality suspense is eked out during a challenge to the death over a seemingly bottomless gorge.Joseph MacDonald's Panavision photography neatly brings the wide vistas to life, aided by the use of Eastman Color which gives off a nice period hue. Waxman delivers a blunderbuss score that's seasoned with Russian vitality, while the costume department deserves a mention for their efforts, particularly for the Polish army who look dandy men of steel. Yes it's a film of flaws and bad decisions, but the good does outweigh the bad in this instance, and how nice it is to have the chance to see a little known part of "bloody" history up there on the screen. 7/10

"Taras Bulba" is a prime candidate for the Flamboyantly Bad Movie Hall of Fame. It's sad to give a thumbs-down review to a movie that features the late, and missed, Yul Brynner, but hey – I'm a Cossack, and I skewer babies for lunch."Taras Bulba" offers two attractions: exhibitions of burly Cossack manhood, and hatred of Poles. The lead singers of the Village People – a cowboy, a construction worker, a cop – look like little girls in comparison to "Taras Bulba"'s Cossacks.Burly macho Cossacks duel by racing their horses over a widening crack in the earth; the first to slip into the crack loses (and presumably dies), but receives a eulogy worthy of a Burly Cossack. Burly Cossacks walk a plank over a pit of fighting bears while chugging vodka, they lift up off the ground a fully grown horse on which sits a fully grown rider, they chop off the hand of an evil Polish character, they plunge their newborn baby boys into freezing cold streams, they lay siege to a city and party down while its citizens die of plague. Cossacks wrestle with their dads, kill their loved ones, trample their hetmans, ignore their wives, orgy with Gypsies, vault on extemporized trampolines, and thunder across the steppes in carefully choreographed ballet that would make Busby Berkeley's heart beat like those prancing horse's hooves and his eyes well up with envy and admiration.With all of that, how can this movie suck so bad, and be such a painful, boring slog to sit through? Direction, production, set design, dialogue: nothing works here. Other than Yul Brynner, nothing in this movie comes together. Well – the horses are nice.An epic doesn't have to be real – it has to create a conceivable alternate world. In what conceivable alternate world is it possible that Yul Brynner is the biological father of Tony Curtis? You get the picture.Neither Yul Brynner nor Charlton Heston is a believable ancient Egyptian, but they are utterly believable as each other's nemesis in "The Ten Commandments." Yul Brynner was a real live Russian wild man. When Brynner had lung cancer, he continued to do the demanding waltz in the stage production of "The King and I." Tony Curtis was Bernard Schwartz of the undying Bronx accent who, in fights, used to protect his pretty face because he knew it was his fortune. These two are not related; on screen they clash as if colliding while walking home from the sets of two different films.Movies can do hate in gripping, even if morally bankrupt ways; we've known that since "Birth of a Nation." But "Taras Bulba"'s hatred of Poles is laughable. Poles here are not dumb Polaks. They are, rather, snobbish noblemen, too effete to fight, and sadomasochistic Catholics who order the torture of Cossacks and then kneel before a crucifix as the torture is carried out. The real sadomasochists are the filmmakers who created these scenes and the audience members who receive a pleasurable, anti-clerical thrill while watching them. The caricature is so two-dimensional no matter what twisted thing the movie has the Poles do – eventually they tie a pretty girl to a stake – it's boring. Yeah, yeah, the viewer wants to scream at the screen. You want me to hate the Poles. Ho, hum. Can't you get this lead balloon of a movie off the ground? Who was behind this bomb, anyway? Was it a desire on some Hollywood mogul's part to get back at the Poles? But then why cast Cossacks as the heroes, given the many populations brutalized by this warrior people, including those who suffered under the Cossacks who allied themselves with Hitler? The source material, Nikolai Gogol's novel, is anti-Polish, but it is also anti-Semitic; Jewish characters did not make it into this film version. I don't know the backstory behind this film, and the film itself is such a bore I can't bring myself to research the question.

Borrowing from Gogol the title ,the proper nouns and the son's killing,Jack Lee Thompson's movie is quite entertaining,ideal for a rainy day or after a hard day's work.The first part is the most interesting: the scenes at the university with its sadistic monks -while one of them is flogging the rebel students,the other kneels down and pray- and its "racism" : a lot of Pole Students cannot accept the fact that those primitive savage cossacks study in their school.Curtis was almost emasculated "to prevent him from sullying Pole girls." It sometimes recalls"Romeo and Juliette",which Christine Kaufman's resemblance with Olivia Hussey who would play the part of Juliette six years later reinforces.Yul Brynner is ideally cast as Taras.The 1936 French version ("Tarass Boulba" French spelling)mainly deals with the second part -the siege- and the stories are similar with the same love interest.

I've seen the reviews here and a couple of comments set "Taras Bulba"'s location in the Argentine pampas. As a native Argentine I must say that's not correct; the pampas run all through the middle part of our Country but this film was shot in the Province of Salta way up in the northern part of Argentina (some 1400 miles from Buenos Aires); the pampas are a huge flat ground very fertile, but Salta is uneven with not too high hills ("cerros") very different from the pampas. Another reviewer says Tony Curtis declared once that when he and co-star Kristine Kaufmann got mixed up during the filming he was already divorced of Janet Leigh; I don't know about that but I can assure you that Leigh came to Salta with him (a friend of mine has a photo with her on the "cerros"). As to the picture, I really enjoyed it -also because I lived in Salta a couple of years and the landscape is very familiar to me- but I think a real classical epic could have come out of Nicolai Gogol's famous novel with a more elaborated script (as a reviewer correctly stated here).J. Lee Thompson's product seems sort of "cheap" and lacks spectacle (except for some real good battle scenes) although I admit if has some very good moments. A somehow impressive one is when the big doors of the sieged city open slowly and André (Curtis) appears in a frontal close shot wearing a Polish armor and helmet for he will make a run for food too feed the starving citizens inside in a clear treason to his country and father for the love of a woman. Also the final dark atmosphere Thompson achieves when Taras (Yul Brynner) confronts his favourite son after a treason he can't possibly understand and even less when André just explains "I did what I had to do". Brynner's performance though a little overacted is good enough and he fills the role of Taras easily. Tony Curtis makes a great effort and gets some good moments as André though he clearly lacks the appropriate "physic du rol". The rest of the cast gives a good support, among them Sam Wanamaker, Brad Dexter, Guy Rolfe and George MacReady. German actress Kristine Kauffman shows her beauty.All in all "Taras Bulba" comes out as an entertaining and amusing film in its genre and a decent intent on Gogol's book, but no much more than that.