Reviewing a movie that was released nearly ten years ago might seem a tad redundant, but sometimes a movie grabs your attention and holds onto you for years on end. It might not be the greatest of movies, or have won any awards, but something about the combination of plot, characters, and actors makes it special for you. For me one such movie was the 1999 release The Thirteenth Warrior.

Now I've always had a soft spot for sword-and-sorcery type adventure stories (the absolutely horrible Conan movies prove there's an exception to every rule), so this movie would seem like a good fit for me right from the start. The irony is that I had been so turned off by the previews and the television spots that I had seen for it that I never would have even picked up the DVD to rent a few years back if it wasn't for one thing - Antonio Banderas.

I had always dismissed Banderas as just another action figure actor - you know, made of plastic and looks good in a kid's meal - until I saw him in the first modern re-make of Zorro with Anthony Hopkins. His wit and charm, and the fact that he could act, were revelations, so I started to pick up other movies that featured him that I had previously avoided. The romantic comedy Miami Rhapsody, where he co-starred with Mia Farrow and Sarah Jessica-Parker, and the two Robert Rodriguez films Desperado and Once Upon A Time In Mexico where he played the guitar player-turned-vigilante.

In each of those movies not only was that first impression of a witty and charming man re-enforced, he also showed a capacity for playing against "type" that I found refreshing. Of all things it was probably Miami Rhapsody that made me decide to pick up The Thirteenth Warrior for the first time, as Banderas was so "not" an action hero in that role. Playing a male nurse fending off the affections of the wife (Farrow) of the man he's caring for while falling in love with his daughter (Parker) he was anything but the macho Latin Lover stereotype with which he had been painted.

In The Thirteenth Warrior Banderas plays Arab poet Ahmed, who has been exiled for looking at the wrong woman and is sent off to be an ambassador to some unknown European court. En route the caravan he is travelling with is set upon by Tartars who chase them into a Viking encampment on the edge of civilization. Ahmed is there only for a day when he is roped into a war party headed back to the where the Vikings come from - the soothsayer has said that thirteen warriors must go on the mission and the thirteenth can not be a Viking. He just so happens to be the only non-Viking in camp at the time and finds that he really has no choice in the matter.