The opening of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey aside, the accepted wisdom is that cavemen movies don't work. Even if you dress them up with anthropological significance and call upon experts like Desmond Morris and Anthony Burgess to design the diverse gestures and grunts, the action will still be limited by the spartan simplicity of the prehistoric lifestyle. To his credit, Jean-Jacques Annaud succeeds in locating the characters within their hostile environment (variously Canada, Scotland, Iceland and Kenya) and explores the primitive intelligence of the questing Ulams without patronising them or the less civilised Ivakas. But it's still a trying experience.

In the prehistoric world, a Cro-Magnon tribe depends on an ever-burning source of fire, which eventually extinguishes. Lacking the knowledge to start a new fire, the tribe sends three warriors on a quest for more. With the tribe's future at stake, the warriors make their way across a treacherous landscape full of hostile tribes and monstrous beasts. On their journey, they encounter Ika, a woman who has the knowledge they seek.