Solomon Kane - This was not bad; better than a number of the other gritty fantasies in historical settings that have appeared over the last few years. Kane is an evil pirate who loses his soul in a demonic pact and hides from the Devil in a monastery covering his body with mystic tattoos and learning about faith and pacifism. Eventually he has to leave, goes through a lot of demonic crap, renounces his pacifist and rallied his old men to kill his demon-possessed brother, rescue his true love, and redeem is soul.
Not a bad story, though it felt pretty generic in many places. I would have enjoyed it better if I wasn't a fan of the Solomon Kane prose stories.
In the original stories Kane was a privateer and no-doubt ruthless, but not the evil pirate seen here. Still, that could just be a reinterpretation of the character. The original Kane was always (at least as far as we know) a devout Puritan and an English patriot. He didn't have any tattoos and didn't ever spend time in a monastery (he would have considered the Catholic monks heretics.) That's one of the oddest things about the movie, Robert E. Howard's Puritan hero isn't even a Puritan any longer. From context it's clear that he is a Catholic himself. The only reason he looks like a Puritan is that he borrows some clothes from a Puritan family he befriends.
This story is meant as an origin story, but it's a little like coming up with a secret origin for Bilbo Baggins. It's not needed and contradicts the source material in a lot of ways. The end result is still a fun movie, but one that really has nothing in common with the original stories other than the character's name.
