James Purefoy as Solomon Kane (Radius/TWC)

Solomon Kane, a low-budget adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s 1930s pulpy tales about a puritan ex-mercenary who fights pirates and demons, has been sitting on the shelves for a few years. It’s no surprise why. Solomon has too little of the anything-goes creative flair of its source material to please the books’ fans, and its made-for-cable aesthetic and generic hack-and-slash set pieces are sure to bore everyone else.

Not based on any one of Howard’s Kane tales (and all the worse for that), the narrative takes the form Hollywood seems most comfortable with nowadays: the superhero origins story. As a young nobleman, Kane (Lucas Stone) flees his stern dad (Max von Sydow, on screen for a full minute and a half) in order to avoid taking orders in the church. He then grows up to become a cruel buccaneer (and James Purefoy, grimy and scowling). Later, while besieging a North African palace, he falls into a trap laid by Satan, who tells him he’s damned for his evil deeds. But Kane soon learns that he can save his soul by rescuing the daughter (Rachel Hurd-Wood) of a slain puritan (the late Pete Postlethwaite) who has been kidnapped by the henchmen of an evil sorcerer laying waste to England.

I’m no theologian, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how Christianity works. In any case, the picture is as suspect historically as it is religiously. Although nominally taking place in the early 17th century, it looks like it exists in that well-known epoch, Film Fantasy Cliché, also shared by Snow White and the Huntsman and lesser Sean Bean movies. The main villains are a bit off tonally, too: the sorcerers’ army is composed of dirty medieval ruffians whom he magically transforms into a mindless rabble of black-eyed, and bald, slaves. The conceit is less Robert E. Howard and more Xena: Warrior Princess.

None of this would matter if the movie delivered some mildly sinful, brainless fun, but for the most part, it doesn’t. The action scenes border on self-parody because of a rather dated emphasis on having Kane strike cool poses as he fights. In one scene, for instance, he charges on horseback between two foes, raising his arms akimbo and shooting them both without looking. It’s corny, of course, but you can’t help wondering why it didn’t stay in whatever 1990s Hong Kong movie it was borrowed from.