'Conan the Barbarian' action-packed but brainless

Marcus Nispel's silly, violent fantasy epic Conan the Barbarian is Hollywood's second attempt at building a franchise based on pulp author Robert E. Howard's signature character.

The first yielded two films of diminishing quality – 1982's ‘Conan the Barbarian’ and 1984's ‘Conan the Destroyer’ – and is best remembered for launching the career of future governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose Austrian accent in the films is so thick as to render the bulk of his dialogue unintelligible.