We know this takes place many centuries in the past, but watching this throwback-in-more-ways-than-one, you find yourself thinking: What year is it now? Who the hell makes movies like this anymore? It’s an old-fashioned spectacle that does not feature a superhero, unless you count an ancestor of man’s best friend who fearlessly fights a sabre-toothed tiger. ( Sweeping does not begin to describe the visuals here it not only deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible, it demands it.) It’s subtitled in an unidentifiable pre-civilization language, when it bothers to give its mud-splattered characters dialogue at all. It’s a movie devoted to overwhelming viewers with vast, lush vistas of craggy cliffs, lightning-split skylines, endless snowy tundras, impossibly green forests and eye-popping auroras.

Part wilderness survival tale, part prehistoric boy-meets-wolf love story and part American Museum of Natural History exhibit come to life, Albert Hughes’ rugged, rich epic feels just as out-of-time as its narrative of primitive hunters and their Canis lupus pals.

Film alpha 2019