Review of Immortals (2011) by Seraphiel — 30 Nov 2011

Immortals is what can only be described as a mess. The acting is poor, the plot is thin, dull and poorly executed and the script is the worst I have ever encountered in a profesional film. Even the films one the redeeming feature - the action - is often flat and dull.

There are only two good things in this film. The first is the action scenes involving the gods which are exciting, dramatic, fast moving and satisfyingly gory but far far too brief. The second is the performance of Mickey Rourke as the evil king Hyperion who is easily the best actor in the whole debacle.

The main con is the acting ability of all the other actors which makes a plank of wood look like Laurence Olivier. Theseus is played by the typical good looking guy who clearly feels that muscles are a fitting substitute for performance and John Hurt, who is a generally a very good actor, is woefully misused.

It is difficult to point out a single actor who acted in any way which didn't seem forced and unreal. However, this may not be their fault as the characters are given the depth of a thimble of water by the script and I imagine it must be hard to work well with a script that is so badly written that it would embarrass a ten year old.

Several times, throughout some of the "profound" speeches the characters gave I actually got goosebumps, not because it was such a poweful use of the English language but, because it was so cheesy that it made my skin crawl.

This similarly applies to the sex scene which was so completely random and seemed shoe-horned into the film just because every film should have romance. This brings me to the plot which was so predictable that you didn't need to be Nostradamus to stay 3 steps ahead of it.

It really does seem like like the creator picked up "Ancient Greece for Pre-School" at a book sale, scavenged some names from it and mushed them all together rather than having any clue about what they are famous for (Eg: Since when was Theseus a bastard? and wasn't Hyperion actually a Titan himself?) but lets just skip over my gripes as to how the film was unrelated to Greek mythology in almost every way as to most readers that will be rather boring.

The final nail in the coffin was that the battle scenes, with the exception of those previously mentioned, seemed rather unoriginal, flat, and, dare I say it, boring. Never have I been less interested in the clash of two great armies.

Similarly the pre battles speeches had none of the badass attitude or brevity of "Tonight We Dine In Hell" and none of the epic grandeur of the speeches in Lord Of The Rings', instead they just sort of fizzled out in banal nonsense.

If I, sat safely in my cinema seat, thought that the supposedly rousing speech was terrible and that the person giving it had the charisma of plague victim then how can we be honestly expected to believe that it could inspire men to charge into almost certain death? Quite simply this film was terrible and I would honestly encourage you not to waste your money and if you really must watch it then buy it cheaply from a bargain bin.