Review of Beowulf & Grendel (2005) by Mathew D — 09 Jul 2007

This movie is not for everybody. It definetely has some things going for it, visually it is impressive, borrowing from the beautiful landscape of Iceland. The costumes are good, the camera work is nice.

The script is a sort of a retelling of the traditional Beowulf, with a lot of the fantastic portions removed or edited, and with more emphasis placed on the characterizations of Beowulf and Grendel, hence the renaming of the film.

The motivations of Grendel are shown clearly, and are believable. Beowulf struggles with notions such as honor, revenge, duty and mercy (and is well cast and acted by Gerard Butler). Unfortunately, the dialogue tends to be campy and distracting, as is the delivery from several of the actors.

Also, the story tends to drag its feet a little, I found myself getting bored with the circular events (Grendel attacks, a little is learned about him through flashback and dialoge, Beowulf has a conversation with the king, goes to sleep, repeat).

All in all, this is an average movie. This isn't an epic war movie, or a fierce action movie, so don't expect that.