10,000 B.C.

NEW YORK (CNS) -- The film begins with some portentous narration solemnly intoned by Omar Sharif putting the film in its fictional historical perspective.

But once the action gets going, "10,000 B.C." (Warner Bros.) proves an all too familiar and only fitfully involving epic taking place at the end of the Ice Age. A young tribal hunter, D'Leh (Steven Strait), must pursue the marauding slave raiders who have kidnapped Evolet (Camilla Belle), the young lady he has loved since childhood.

D'Leh had to grow up under the shadow of his father's apparent desertion of the tribe years before, but during the annual ritual of the hunting of one of the giant mammoths that still roam the earth, he accidentally wins the day and becomes the town's unlikely hero, possibly signaling that he'll be the one to fulfill the prophecy of the revered soothsayer known as Old Mother (Mona Hammond), who also has divined great things for the raven-haired, blue-eyed Evolet.

D'Leh, his mentor Tic'Tic (Cliff Curtis), a scrappy young kid named Baku (Nathanael Baring) and a few others venture off, fighting predatory birds, saber-toothed tigers and mammoths along the way.

It is D'Leh's compassionate rescue of a giant tiger, rather akin to Androcles and the lion, that comes in particularly good stead when the fearsome Naku tribe, headed by Nakudu (Joel Virgel), is just about to attack them.

The Naku are impressed as all get-out when the fearsome beast leaves D'Leh intact, and the tribesmen agree to join forces with D'Leh against the bad guys. (Nakudu has a vested interest as his beloved young son has been kidnapped as well. In a further bit of serendipity, it transpires that Nakudu knew D'Leh's father.)

Director Roland Emmerich's often silly epic holds few real surprises, but its cliche-filled script is basically standard for this genre.

Still, the digital effects are, on the whole, impressive, especially the bustling pyramid-studded slave colony on a desert plain. Here, we learn, the warlords (one of whom has his eye on the beauteous but defiant Evolet) are under the thumb of a pagan "god" and his evil henchmen-priests.

There's a predictable action-packed climax, during which D'Leh, in a distinctly un-Christian moment, vengefully delivers a death blow to a dastardly villain -- though not, it must be said, without provocation.

There are no sex or language issues here. Apparently four-letter words had not yet been invented; otherwise, D'Leh and his scruffy dreadlocked companions speak English remarkably well, uttering nary an "ugh."

The film contains intense, but not gory, action violence and killings and some pagan mysticism. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-II -- adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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