Apparently a whopping correction is in order. John Ford was widely reported to have died in 1973, but it turns out he is alive and well and still making movies--in Kazakhstan.

That, at least, is what Nomad: The Warrior, a big-budget epic newly arrived from that country, suggests. Two other directors, Sergei Bodrov and Ivan Passer, are credited, and there’s not a cowboy in sight, but the film looks and feels like an old-school American western. Not a great western, but a reasonably good example of that genre. Hats off in particular to the horse wranglers.

The story, set in the 18th century, tells of the nomadic Kazakhs’ hope for a leader who can unite their various tribes and drive out the invading Jungars. It’s a bit odd that a tale of nationalistic pride is told using North American actors in several important parts, but one of those, Jason Scott Lee, makes quite a compelling presence as Oraz, a mystic dedicated to identifying and educating this long-prophesied leader, supposedly a descendant of Genghis Khan. The destined lad is Mansur (Kuno Becker), and he’s a bit scrawny for a warrior king, but when his time to lead comes he proves worthy.

...the actors manage to invest all this predictability with a surprising amount of charm. They don’t get any help from the landscape: Kazakhstan, alas, appears to be one extremely brown country. (The rolling hills? Brown. The houses and walled cities? Brown. The clothing? Brown.) The cast does, however, get excellent support from a huge assembly of horses. The scenes are staged with an impressive (and, one hopes, safe) fearlessness, the horses pulling off stunts that Hollywood films usually reserve for cars. The directors love that theater-shaking favorite scene from the old westerns: first there’s the ominous sound of thundering hooves, then a pack of horses crests a hill, then they seem to gallop directly over the camera. A cliché? Maybe. But it looks great here, all the many times it is used.

Excerpt from Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times