Movie Review: Hercules

Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) helps close out the July book with the story of Hercules.


Dwayne Johnson (Pain & Gain), with his yak testicle hair beard (that's what he claims), plays the title role of Hercules, the demi-god son of Zeus and a mortal woman.  To be free of Zeus' jealous wife Hera's attempts to kill him he must go through the 12 labors.  These are tasks set before him that only a demi-god such as himself can perform.  This is the story you expect, going into a film about Hercules.  This is the story you get for the first 10 minutes of this film.  Turns out he's gone through his 12 labors and now is a mercenary for hire that goes around with his rag-tag group of merry men (and one Amazonian woman) doing tasks in exchange for gold.  He is hired by Lord Cotys (John Hurt, Snowpiercer) to train the men of Thrace to defend his kingdom from the evil warlord Rhesus.


This all seems utterly ridiculous, and it is, but it turns out to be a bit of fun.  The story, although told poorly in this film, is quite interesting at the base of it.  You find out that Hercules may not be a demi-god after all.  His nephew travels with him on his adventures and tells the tales of his previous acts.  Each time the tales get taller and taller until you finally have a legend born of a man who was born the son of Zeus.  I think this is an interesting commentary on how myths and legends are created out of word of mouth.  Even though this film is filled with flaws, that was probably the one thing that bothered me most.  It is heavily implied that Hercules is only a mortal man, but you see him perform some pretty superhuman feats throughout.  This and the other flaws didn't even bother me that much though, because the movie was just plain fun.


Before I get to the part where I had fun, I need to point out some other flaws.  This is because I want to make sure you're completely aware that this is not necessarily a "good" movie.  To start with, it's just poorly written.  As I said, the base story is a nice twist, but after it is revealed it becomes a little predictable.  It is also filled with the tropes and clichés of action adventure films like this.  The script is not great either.  There are a lot of lines that just don't work, and some dialogue that seemed to go a little too modern day.  All that being said, if those are the kinds of things that you just cannot get past in a movie, then you may just want to walk away.  If you think that you might be able to move past this if some other proper ingredients were thrown in, then I'll get to what I liked about the film.


The actors.  Not necessarily the acting, but the actors.  It was like they all knew what kind of hokey movie they were in and decided to just go with it.  It just seemed like they were having fun playing these characters, and that flowed through to me having fun watching them.  Dwayne Johnson, in his usual fashion, just oozed with his natural charisma and really hammed it up for the camera.  Some of Hercules cohorts were even more fun to watch.  Rufus Sewell (A Knight's Tale), plays kind of his right hand man, Autolycus, who is handy with daggers.  He gets some good, well-timed quips in with his dialogue.  Ingrid Bolso Berdal (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters) plays a fierce no-nonsense Amazonian.  The highlight had to be Ian McShane (Cuban Fury) though.  He played a "seer", Amphiaraus, who was burdened with the ability to receive visions from the gods, including when someone's time was up.  You just didn't know what was going to come out of his mouth.  There is a fun recurring theme about visions of his own death that pays off with what was the biggest laugh at my screening.  There are a few chuckles in this film, but it does try to take itself seriously throughout most.  It's just that it's so self-aware, that it allows you to laugh with it in some scenes instead of at it.


Where it gets serious is the violence.  This is another part of the film that excelled for me.  There were a couple of big battles that, in such a shoddy movie, were themselves well shot and fun to watch.  One of my earlier complaints about the film was the fact that Hercules was still kind of superhuman even though implied that he was merely mortal.  Most of his super-heroic feats were on the battlefield, though, and just gave a little extra flair to the fighting going on.


Again, I must say that this is not really a "good" movie in the technical sense, but it is entertaining.  If you want an Oscar contender, you're in the wrong place.  If you're looking for a light, fun summer popcorn flick on weekend afternoon, then there are far worse movies you could go with.  And in the land of 2 1/2 to 3 hour movies that have recently been flooding the theaters, this movie has the added bonus of breezing by with a mere 98 minute run time.


Rating: ******---- (6 out of 10)


Memorable Quote:
Amphiaraus: Do you mind? I was having a moment.