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Queen of the Mountains Movie Review

Queen of the Mountains is a 2014 Kyrgyz epic historical film directed by Sadyk Sher-Niaz and starring Elina Abai Kyzy. This movie had a lot of potential that was botched by weak execution.

Kurmanjan, a courageous and independent woman, saves her nation from destruction when the Russians invade. This woman is a real historical figure and her story truly is powerful, especially memorable is the fact that she basically sacrificed her own son in order to save her nation. However, watching this movie, you wouldn’t think that she was as incredible.

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Yes, I found this film very problematic. Its intentions were great of course and there is truly an epic spectacle lurking beneath this premise, but the directing from Sadyk Sher-Niaz is so poor that he ended up tarnishing the entire product. What we get, then, is an okay, passable feature and rarely anything more than that.

Some of the action scenes, especially the horse riding sequences were terrific and superbly executed. The acting is also very strong from everybody involved, particularly from Elina Abai Kyzy who steals the show of course. But the characterization itself left a lot to be desired.

Most of the issues here can be traced to the terrible editing on display. Queen of the Mountains basically rushes through its second half while the first one is overlong and uneventful. The time jumps are also not well handled whatsoever, leading to a chaotic mess that lacked smoothness and polish.

A couple of scenes hold some emotional power, but that conflict of whether or not to save her son should have been used for great emotional pull for sure. The movie does offer a solid look into the Russian invasion and the wish of the Kyrgyz people to invite their forty clans, thus being a pretty good historical lesson overall, but its narrative was not great, though the dialogue was solid.

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The film’s colorful costumes are definitely not historically accurate as they look too bright. Still, they are lovely to look at and the production design and score are overall quite strong, especially so for a rather small-budgeted feature for this genre. I just wish that the directing was stronger.