**/*** (2.5 stars)
Hercules is a demi-god, born of
Zeus and a mortal woman. Despite Hera’s, Zeus’ wife, attempts to destroy him,
Hercules grows into an impossibly strong warrior, capable of great feats of strength
and stamina. His completion of the Twelve Labours set him by Hera become famed throughout
the land, and soon his god-like skill is sought by those in need of military assistance.
Being a demi-god, he cannot be defeated and will quash any enemy he is set
against… or so the legend says.
In a departure from the usual
Hercules films, Brett Ratner’s film instead chooses to look upon Hercules as
being a human being, gifted with great strength but not the son of a God.
Instead of working alone, he works with a team of misfits, sell-swords who will
fight for whoever is prepared to pay them the most. Instead of a magical
Ancient Greece, Ratner chooses to show a ‘realistic’ world wherein optical illusions
create fantastical beasts. I suppose it’s an unusual idea, but it does mean
that for the majority of the film we are hit over the head with the moral of
the story: ‘Believe in yourself, and you can be anything.’ Yeah, it’s pretty
cheesy. The plot and character arcs are wholly predictable and unoriginal –
from the moment we first meet Hercules’ team, I could easily guess which
characters would fail to make it to the end credits. The big ‘twist’ is also
very obvious, but I suppose with a film such as this, you go for the spectacle
rather than a complex plot.
Everyone knows this is a pretty
silly film – if you go to see it, you are clearly not expecting something
profound – and even the actors on screen know that everything is pretty preposterous.
Everyone, that is, apart from Dwayne Johnson, who chooses to play Hercules
completely ‘straight’. By that, I mean he chooses to take the entire thing
wholly seriously, clearly believing in the strife that Hercules faces, and
loading certain phrases with emotion that the rest of the film, and cast, do
not support. There are some pretty top quality actors in the cast, including
John Hurt, Peter Mullan, Rufus Sewell and Joseph Fiennes, who clearly all
accept that the script is pretty terrible and that they’re simply there for the
pay cheque. These actors completely relish the chance to chew the scenery and
overact completely, which is rather enjoyable, but Johnson seems to believe
that this B-Movie is his Hamlet! The
fact that he cannot act doesn’t help the situation either…
So, a very silly action flick
with a pretty shocking script and action sequences a-plenty. Some critics have
been rather mean about this film, but if you go in expecting to be amused and distracted
for an hour and a half, then this is a perfectly passable B-Movie. I wasn’t
expecting Shakespeare, and thus I wasn’t disappointed. I probably wouldn’t
actively seek it out again, but if I were to be flicking through the channels
one evening and stumbled across it, then I might well watch it again.
Comments
Post a Comment