One day, the late Post-Gazette dining critic Mike Kalina looked up from writing a column and asked me when caviar became popular in Russia. Ever ready with arcane factoids, I said it was during the reign of Ivan the Terrible. "Oh," Kalina mused. "I knew him back when he was just Ivan the Not-So-Bad."

A similar appraisal derives from "Mongol," director Sergei Bodrov's sweeping epic about Genghis Khan back when he was just Temudgin, the compassionate conservative of 13th-century Asia. Everything's relative. And conquering half the world was a steppe by steppe process.

Bodrov's lavish, high-horsepower vehicle -- first of a planned trilogy -- opens with the emperor-to-be at age 9, a minor chieftain's son being taken by his father to choose a bride. Central Asia in those days was divided into mutually hostile tribes including Mongols, Merkits and Tatars, who randomly raid, pillage and plunder each other.

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'Mongol'

3 stars = Good
Ratings explained

• Starring: Tadanobu Asano, Honglei Sun.
• Rating: R for sequences of bloody warfare. (In Mongolian with subtitles.)
• Web site: 'Mongol'

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It's a rough time to be a kid: You're subject to murder or marriage at any moment. Young Temudgin is supposed to pick a Merkit bride, but, inspecting a lineup of girls from a smaller clan, he is snared by the mischievous eyes of 10-year-old Borte. She's his choice. The Merkits are furiously insulted. His dad is poisoned by Tatars on the way home. His family is betrayed. His enemies keep capturing but not killing him. (Their code of honor doesn't let them kill children; they have to wait for him to grow up.) He repeatedly escapes, Houdini-like, from the heavy wooden head-and-hands yoke they put on him. This boy's stocks rise and fall more than the Nasdaq.

Five years later, Temudgin (Tadanobu Asano) finally marries Borte (Khulan Chuluun) -- a terrific wife but hard to hold onto. She is kidnapped, for the first of many times, by the Merkits. Temudgin seeks help from his blood-brother Jamukha (Honglei Sun), who provides 20,000 soldiers to recover her -- even while opining, "You need a horse more than a woman." They're dearest friends (they do head bumps instead of fist bumps) but soon become deadly enemies: These Mongols and their issues put the Hatfield and McCoy fussings to shame.

The film takes us up to the climactic battle by which Temudgin united the nomadic tribes, establishing himself as khan (ruler) of what would become the largest contiguous empire in world history, stretching from the Caspian to the Sea of Japan.

And still two more films to go ...