Review of Hercules (2014) by Foxgrove — 24 Jul 2014

It all starts so promisingly with remembered stories of some of the famed labours of our eponymous hero. However, after a quick introduction to the man god's background and a whiplash bout of special effects this settles into a training exercise for two rather un excitingly staged battles. Further damage is inflicted by a script that insists on having both Rufus Sewell (who is rather bad actually) and Ian McShane spew forth a lot of unnecessarily sardonic humour. Things do liven up somewhat when the villains are unmasked and Hercules gets to perform his last labour. Overall though, aside from having superior visuals, this is not really any better than the year's earlier sword and sandals opus 'The Legend of Hercules'.

At the end of this mercifully short epic Ian McShane proclaims ( In a sly dig?) 'The truth about Hercules, I prefer it to the Legend'. I say on this evidence we don't need either of them. Perhaps the film we are waiting for is the one that presents us with those 12 labours. Now that may be worth contemplating.