Friday, November 9, 2012

Immortals


Directed by Tarsem Singh.
2011. Rated R, 110 minutes.
Cast:
Henry Cavill
Stephen Dorff
Isabel Lucas
Kellan Lutz
Joseph Morgan
Ann Day-Jones
Peter Stebbings

Where there are swords, there must also be sandals. Not really, but they do enjoy each other’s company quite often. In Immortals they not only hang out together once again, they have many more of the usual suspects with them: chain mail, oracles, prophecies, and of course, immortals. Oh, I almost forgot there has to be a magical weapon. In this case it is The Epirus Bow.

Let’s back up a bit. Many moons ago, the gods defeated the titans at war. Instead of killing their enemies, the gods banished the titans to a special cage deep within the bowels of a Greek village where they are to spend eternity in a state of suspended animation. Sigh. This is where The Epirus Bow comes in. Whoever possesses it can use it to free the titans and wreak havoc on the world. Inexplicably, the gods don’t keep nor attempt to destroy this bow. The gods must be crazy.

Fast forward a few years. Unsurprisingly, the tyrannical King Hyperion (Rourke) is busy turning over every stone he comes across looking for said bow as part of his master plan…wait for it…wait for it…to rule the world! Muahahaha…ahem, sorry. In the process, he kills lots of people just to make sure we know how evil he is. Many of these are his own soldiers and mostly for no more reason than I’ve already given. That’s got to be bad for the troops’ morale, no?


Since every villain must contend with a hero, we have Theseus (Cavill). He’s a peasant who takes care of his mom and pals around with an old man (Hurt) whom he doesn’t realize is Zeus (Evans) in disguise. Pretty early on, Zeus comes right out and tells us Theseus is the only person who can stop King Hyperion. Of course, the gods could but Zeus forbids them from getting involved in human affairs. That whole thing gets darn messy, but I digress. The virgin oracle we can’t believe is a virgin is played by the almost impossibly beautiful (in my opinion) Freida Pinto.  Also early on, she “sees” that Theseus will indeed get his hands on The Epirus Bow. So there, now you don’t have to watch this crap. Hmmm. Since we are in Ancient Greece I’ll say it Olde English (wait…what?). This crap, thou mustn’t watcheth.

If you couldn’t tell already, I hateth this movie. Immortals is aggressively dumb without the good sense to not take itself so seriously. Nearly every action any character makes can be summed up by one word: stupid. It also breaks its own rules several times. This is noticeable mostly because the film itself makes a big deal out of these rules. Save for a couple of brief instances, it lacks the visual splendor of 300 or even the Clash of the Titans remake so we can’t even distract ourselves with shiny objects other than Mickey Rourke’s ridiculous looking headgear. The final, meant to be spectacular, battle involving the cgi titans is underwhelming. The Epirus Bow isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, either. It’s a bow that supplies its own arrows which is nice, but after taking the one shot to free the titans, it’s still just a bow and arrow.

Immortals wants to an epic but just comes across as hokey. Despite his helmets, Mickey Rourke is awesome as always and does all he can with a role requiring little more of him than being sweaty and stomping around the set. John Hurt also fares well. As our hero, Henry Cavill is just ho-hum, though he certainly looks the part (or for Superman, the part which he’ll use to soar into theaters next summer). Freida Pinto is absolutely drop dead gorgeous, just in case I didn’t make that clear. Unfortunately, the amount of drool that escapes my hanging bottom lip whenever she is on screen isn’t nearly enough for me to recommend this.

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