English Film review
Johnson Thomas
All brawn and Effects but no brain
Film: The Legend of Hercules(English/3D/Hindi
Dubbed)
Cast: Kellan Lutz, Liam McIntyre, Scott Adkins, Liam
Garrigan
Director: Renny Harlin
Rating:
* * ½
Spectacle happy but performances and casting choices
are not gravitating.
From the illustrious
narratives of ancient Greek mythology where mortals and gods collide, comes the
story of THE LEGEND OF HERCULES. A reimagining of the hero’s
epic origins, the film approaches Hercules’ otherworldly and legendary history
from the perspective of a young man struggling with his destiny.
Born half-man/half-god and imbued with
awe-inspiring superhuman strength, Hercules (Kellan Lutz) falls into a
forbidden romance that quickly incurs the wrath of his calculating stepfather,
the King. Subsequently exiled and forced into slavery, the heroic Hercules
fights for his life as a gladiator, and vows to free his people from the
tyranny of the evil monarch.
Renny Harlin’s un-enterprising narrative makes the mediocrity of the screenplay
look even worse. His presentation of the myth is hopelessly woebegone.The scale
is also not quite epical.
When Argos is overrun in 1200 B.C.,
Amphitryon (Scott Adkins, nothing if not intense) takes over
as king and takes the queen Alcmene (Roxanne McKee, giving a
lonely good performance) as his own. Sympathetic to her plight, the great Zeus
impregnates her in order to sire a hero who may, two decades hence, avenge his
mother. Just after the birth, Amphitryon is informed that Alcmene has had
"a large boy."
Large he
is, so much so that, once he turns twenty, there's not enough room in town for
him and Amphitryon's yellow-bellied son and designated successor, Iphicles (Liam Garrigan).
And going very much against the grain,
this Hercules is portrayed as a one-woman man, a fellow whose fighting spirit
is roused principally by the fear that, if he doesn't get back to Greece from
Egypt within three moons, his modelish blond girlfriend Hebe (Gaia
Weiss) will marry his treacherous rival.
Although
it clearly aspires to the 300 style of action, this
Bulgaria-shot pseudo-epic is marked by CGI sequences that look superficial and
therefore represents the mediocre. And
that mediocrity is magnified by the arbitrary and unimaginative use of 3D.
The script by Sean Hood and Daniel Giat have much to do with the more
commonly known aspects of the Hercules mythology and it positions itself as a
sort-of origins story. So films like Gladiator, Spartacus and Benhur come in
for casual referencing. This is a indistinct period actioner and is in fact an
Epic let-down!
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