Mongol was one of the five nominees for the most recent Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar - it didn't win, of course, probably because voters started giggling as soon as they heard that the film came from Kazakhstan, number one exporter of potassium.

But this is a big picture - not one of those tedious Central Asian films consisting of nothing but animal husbandry difficulties, but a bloody, bold, resolute costume drama of clanking swords, forbidden love, noble destinies, and... all that sort of thing. There's something inherently daring about glorifying the life - even the early life - of Genghis Khan (or Temudjin, to use the name he was born with). Is it whining pedantry to point out that this guy was a brutal, warmongering tyrant? Yes - it is. The film's outlook is that this is an era when you could hardly eat breakfast without igniting another tribal feud, and Temudjin does the best anyone could to rise above petty disputes and overcome them (as well as escape from prison, rescue his true love, etc.). In doing so, bit by bit - or steppe by steppe, we might say - he forms an empire.

The images are lush, the extras swarm menacingly when they have to and the score is suitably tub-thumping. I can't believe that there are people who lack the desire to see movies like this.