Ao, le dernier Néandertal

Ao. The Last Hunter is a story about a Neanderthal hunter who following the death of his wife and child and with disease ravaging his clan leaves to find his birthplace.

Along the way his path clashes with Homo Sapiens and in particular a heavily pregnant young girl and her baby. An unlikely bond grows between the two as they journey south whilst being chased by a tribe they escape from.

The story of the film is simple but it's strength lies in the great depiction of our distant ancestors. Obviously no-one knows for sure if Neanderthals ever even met Homo Sapiens but I like to think that this is a pretty accurate depiction of life in that time. The make up artists certainly did wonders transforming the lead actor into looking like a Neanderthal.

It is beautifully filmed with some great scenery and it seems like a lot of research was done prior to filming as it goes someway to debunking a few Neanderthal myths.

If you're on the look out for something a bit different and have any interest in prehistoric life then this is well worth watching.

AO: THE LAST HUNTER is the latest in a line of prehistoric epics. These films seemed to originate with the cheesy back-projected movies of the 1940s before Hammer had a mini resurgence of them in the 1960s with ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. and its follow-ups. They were back in the 1980s with the likes of the influential QUEST FOR FIRE, but since then the genre has been a little quiet.

This film is French and unsurprisingly for the French it plays out as a love story for the most part. The hero is a wandering Neanderthal hunter who meets up with a woman who just so happens to be a Homo Sapien. The two fall in love, but not before the surprisingly modern plot elements play out. And that's the main problem with AO: it feels very modern in places, particularly with a modern-language voice over narration which really feels out of place, and the usual gender issues which would play out on a modern romantic comedy.

As a film, this does have a fair few strengths. The visual look is strong with fine cinematography bringing to life the snowbound terrain. The effects are strong and the look of the Neanderthals is an authentic one. There are some truly exciting moments, like the polar bear fight. It's so unfortunate, then, that most of the running time is wasted with romantic nonsense, when the director had the change to make something so much more profound.

The movie is about last of the Neanderthals, named Ao, who after loosing all his clan ventures back from Siberia to Southern Europe where he came from, to find his brother, Oa.

The film is set in pretty much realistic environment and the main guy is believable Neanderthal, though maybe little bit softer at heart, than we imagine Neanderthals would be.

We see realistic scene of his ugly Neanderthal wife giving birth to child. Realistic scene of Ao and his mate fighting bear and so on... So we prepare ourself to dig deeper into movie with documentaristic approach, we are going to see prehistoric life of humans and Neanderthals but after Ao's departure from Siberia and his first meeting with humans, the problems start.

Giving that the action scenes of the movie aren't all that impressive, the love theme is not so original, there is little drama or tension that can capture your attention, it would be smartest thing to continue the movie in only available way to make it stand-out and original - I mean, making it as realistic, as possible and while it started good in that direction, it failed miserably very soon.

Ao meets human girl who has the appearance of top-model, apparently shaves her legs and armpits and is just too damn sexy and unbelievable for all her surrounding people and nature.

From that moment we get cliché-driven, stupid love-escape story with predictable end. Good bye realism... good bye exploring of prehistoric life... good bye the most interesting part of the movie.

I understand that it's NOT documentary and director has all the right to soften the harsh prehistoric world, but it's just too much.

This could be worse if girl couldn't act. Fortunately she can, and does it pretty good actually, but alas, she can't save the movie.

This kind of cinematography could have success in only one case, but somewhere along the production director went the very wrong way.

Overall, mediocre film

Really a fascinating French film, concerning a Neanderthal man and his relationship with a really attractive (more advanced) species. A very difficult movie to pull off and with any degree of emotion and sensitivity but 'The Last Hunter' is very well pieced together, nicely paced and with some cool action sequence. Anyone expecting loads of prehistoric beasts will ultimately be disappointed but 'Ao' is so much more. A touching, alternative love story.

First of all , the narration ruins everything. From the first scene . The film then seems to be a documentary . Not anything else . Maybe it was intended so but still they could have found a better voice too. More cinematic . Too bad for the money . The lead Ao is great as performance but Aki is a bit ''too much '' in her performance. The director seems to not see this . Two . For this kind of money they could get much better cinematography . Which is a big part of any movie . (See Alpha 2018 ) . The story is interesting and brilliant at times though . Three. Music ,again , for this money is bad too . Sound seems to be good enough though. Anyway ,it shows why the movie didn't make money . And it feels too unreal at times too. I guess the director wanted a lot of accuracy of the era but then again we can't know exactly how they lived back then . We never will . Worth watching anyway . Cheers!