Monday 18 April 2011

Solomon Kane

Solomon Kane is a the character is a 1928 work of fiction and also a comic book He is a Puritan out to vanquish evil in all its forms and inhabiting a world fo devils, sorcerers, and evil men without redemption.

In the 2009 released film the story begins before Solomon became a Puritan and was an adventuring mercenary fighting in North Africa in 1600 and encountering a demon, the Devil’s Reaper who announces that because of his life the hero much accompany him to Hell. Solomon escapes saying he is not ready and returns to England where he takes sanctuary in a monastery in the countryside where he finds contentment until the Abbot has dreams which reveals the man must go back to his family estate in the South West. He meets a Puritan family on their way to the New World who offer him a lift but he declines and is set upon and left for dead, but then found and treated by the Puritan Family.

On their travels they encounter a villages where everyone appears killed except for a little girl but Solomon is justifiably wary and giving her a cross to hold she leaves a mark on the daughter who cared for Solomon before turning into a demon and going off.

He accepts the invitation to accompany the family to New World but on an overnight break he and the younger son of the family observe a murderous group taking villagers into slave captivity and they are discovered and they and the rest of the family are captured. Solomon despite having renounced violence is forced to taking up arms as the men kill the younger son and then the other members of the family with the exception of the daughter who is taken into captivity and the mother who he leaves because her husband before he dies tells Solomon to rescue the daughter and in doing so he will find his salvation.

He engages in battle with some of the men but encountering one group he is told she is dead and this means he has failed to gain redemption and turns to drink. However at the Inn he is recognised men who served with him in the earlier life and who believe he is the one man to stand up against the forces now engulfing the South West counties of Devon and Cornwall.

The community is attacked a Solomon is captured and crucified but while on the cross he is recognised by the daughter who is passing in a prison cart and calls out to him. He breaks down from the cross and he is cared for by a pagan woman until his wounds heals and he is told that a sorcerer called Malachi has taken control based on a castle owned by Solomon’s family. As no more than a teenage boy he had been involved in a dispute with his older brother who had accidentally fallen off a cliff top to his presumed death and Solomon blaming himself, or being blamed had left home. Because it is the family home he is able to lead a small band into the castle where he finds his father imprisoned. The head soldier for Malachi wears a mask and has the power to turn the brains of men into slave fighters. This man was responsible for ordering Solomon to be crucified. Now his father tells him that the man is his brother, He had gone to the sorcerer after his son has been found injured and in a coma but the price of the help had been more than he could cope with and he asks his son to kill him and break the spell the sorcerer has over the people.

It is at this point that that why the demon left a mark on the daughter is revealed. This is to signify her innocence and that use of her a drop of her blood will open a portal to release a great fiery demon which nearly gets the better of Solomon. He manages to shoot Malachi in the head but it appears that his soul, that of Malachi, his decapitated brother and the demon are drawn in Hell. Howver true to the forecast in saving the girl he is redeemed. The mother is found and with her daughter they set off for the New World. Solomon now commences his new life attacking evil wherever it can be found. The late Pete Postlethwaite plays the Puritan father.

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