When Solomon Kane was released in cinemas around the world, most critics gave it an absolute savaging so when I saw this release very cheap, I figured I'd give it a shot.

I was glad I did.

While some of the complaints by other critics are valid, I think that they're are missing out on an enjoyable action movie.

This movie was based on the pulp fiction stories by Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan The Barbarian, and you can really see that influence here. The story itself was written by the movies director, Michael J. Bassett and pays great respect to the source material. It manages to both be an original story and one that is true to the creators ideals.

While it may not win an Oscar or anything like that, Solomon Kane, is very enjoyable. James Purefoy as Solomon, is an absolute revelation. He just projects calmness (when Kane is trying to redeem his soul) and menage (when Kane is looking for revenge) and it's as if they are two completely different characters. The late Pete Postelthwaite makes a great appearance as a Puritan head of a family and just oozes class every time he is on the screen.

For me the only down side was the 'twist' at the end where the masked man's identity is revealed. For a movie that prided itself on great make up work and special effects, the wounds and writing on the mans face looked like a small child had done them.

That however is redeemed big time by the amazing special effects work that went in to creating the Fire Demon. I won't give away any details here but I did really like that part of the movie.

The picture transfer and sound are very good for this release but does struggle very slightly on a couple of scenes but not enough to be distracting.

The special features really come in to their own here. Each one is very interesting, especially how they made the Fire Demon come to life, and really round out this release brilliantly well.

I won't sit here and say this is a perfect movie by any means because it's not but I would highly recommend it for being action packed, having some good characters that really project off of the screen and for being a bit more intelligent than the normal bog standard revenge / redemption movie.

Ignore the other critics that savaged this movie, it's well worth seeing.