Review of Immortals (2011) by Ravenscar — 14 Nov 2011

A rather mundane way to waste a couple of hours. This film reeks of average content, average scripting and (mostly) average acting. That's not to say it's bad, it's not not good in any real way. Certainly the action scenes (which we all are watching it for, lets face it) can be quite good, but those that are are unfulfilling in their length. A great deal has been said about Immortals comparison to 300, well of that film it falls far short, but the lineage of this bastard son is notable in the attempt at the slow motion visceral combat scenes. Yet somehow director Singh has managed to take all the slickness and clarity out of these scenes. In the predictable final battle, after a rather lacklustre pep-talk by main character Theseus, the melee is so confusion and the colours so drab that its very difficult to see exactly what is going on and whose doing what. Not that you'd care much; the characters of this film are all pretty mundane and without intrigue, popping off a couple of cliched lines occasionally and then dying appropriately as the drama demands. You have Theseus, the main protagonist who has a rather worrying relationship with his mother and that's about all there is to distinguish him. He blathers a bit about faith and the lack of faith (a running theme), but it's so irrelevant to the overall plot you can pretty much disregard it. There's Phaedra, the virgin oracle who doesn't remain so very long (here the film is similar to 300 in its gratuitous and pointless sex scene, although not as funny as 300). Then there's, for me, the one true highlight of the film, the "evil" king Hyperion, played by Mickey Rourke. Rourke is by far the strongest character of the film and I actually found myself rooting for him more and more; he had a game plan, set morals and didn't seem like a piece of wet tissue paper like a lot of the other characters. I genuinely hoped he would win in the end (he didn't, this is Hollywood after all). Another stronger point is the battle sequences of the gods, which are fast and viceral, though too short to be really satisfying. Watching what one of them splatter bad guy head with a hammer in slow motion was pretty fun. But tragically that's about it, the greek gods, who are dressed in bizarre garish gold costumes something akin to a French perfum advert, are pretty anonymous - the only way to tell Poseidon appart from Zeus is that he's holding a trident. I'm sore pressed to say who the other two gods were, possibly Apollo? Maybe Helios? Perhaps Whocares, god of weak character development? Athena, who is actually named, seems a bit of bimbo and quite pathetic, rather than the strong willed, stubborn goddess of wisdom and war she's meant to be. But, like all other characters in this film, even the gods are just there as padding until their dramatic deaths (I did tick the "spoiler" box). Of course only a Titan (whom Hyperion is attempting to free to bring about a new world order or something....) can do it. I bet they're massive! I hear you cry. Well no, they're not titanic, ahem, they're more like the savages from the Decent and plastered in grey mud, then they die like Hollywood vampires by crumbling into dust, much like my interest at this point. All that isn't bad, it's just not good, it's weak but its palatable. It's average but its not terrible. What's really bad about the film is little irritating stupidities that make no sense whatsoever. It might just be me, but Phaedra drinking from pool of water in the least efficient way possible (holding her hand vertically so that no water is actually retained) and then dribbling water from her own lips into Theseus' was just ridiculous. The misuse of actors like John Hurt who had so much more potential. The random sea of oil that has no function to the plot whatsoever. The knife wound that Theseus receives in the end but doesn't stop him - at least Maximus in Gladiator had the good grace to die after such a wound. The village that is undefendable despite the fact that its only obvious entrance is a narrow corridor cut into the stone of the cliffs themselves - as we all know, small narrow corridors are totally undefensible unless manned by half naked Greeks... oh wait. These things and others just pander to ridiculous pointless features that are there as padding for an empty film with barely enough strength of character to stand up on its own. I suspect the lifetime of this film is slightly less than its title puports.

P.S. I really do wish Hyperion had won in the end, at least I felt like he had put the hard work in.