Brace yourself - “The Legend of Hercules” marks one of the two Hercules-related offering of the year which practically should reminds you how there were two movies about the siege of the White House last year or Snow White tale two years ago. The other one is Brett Ratner’s The Rock-starring sandal-and-sword simply entitled “Hercules” which is coming out this summer. As catchy as the title is and as diligently it tries to set-up the origin story of Hercules before “he realizes that he is Hercules”, the end product of this Renny Harlin’s (“Cliffhanger”) directorial effort looks more like a train-wreck than a bountiful epic adventure.
Kellan Lutz (“The Twilight Saga”) plays the young prince Alcides (pre-Hercules) to the power-greed King Amphityron (Scott Adkins) who has every reason to hate his “son”. Conceived by Zeus whom answers his mother Alcmene’s (Roxanne McKee) prayer to bear a child that would ultimately ends his husband’s tyranny, Alcides gets banished by his father to Heliopolis after trying to run off with his lover Princess Hebe of Crete (Gaia Weiss) whom the king arranges to have his inferior first-born son Iphicles (Liam Garrigan) to wed. During his banishment, he learns that his real identity as demigod Hercules and his real purpose to end the reign of his “father”.
This movie which is supposed to provide a dutiful insight into the younger days of Hercules is practically a laughable joke here. This inferiorly-made movie makes everything in “Wrath of the Titans” looks way superior and “Immortals” to look more stylish with the given substances. The plot itself is a shame, thoroughly chaotic and plot-holes-riddance. Written by a panel comprising of Daniel Giat, Giulio Steve, Renny Harlin and Sean Hood (“Conan the Barbarian”), the story takes the liberty of adapting the more familiar Hercules tales and decisively goes on to churn out a bad amalgamation of “Immortals”, “Troy”, “300” and “Gladiator”.
From the narrative aspect, this movie is far from been consistent and more often than not, does a poor job in treating the story with bigger prospect, respect or purpose to the characters. Many stages of the story are either skipped or merely breeze through – even that vital story about his banishment and rise as the Greek heroism symbol during the middle stint is heavily condensed with unsatisfactory exploration to give the movie plenty of morality and emotional hollows all over. Ultimately, the movie never properly gets a fair recounting or inspiring plot to this evenly-twisted tales of Hercules which I am not sure even existed.
To add in more garbage materials into the movie, the scribblers decided to give the dialogues some head-scratching moments. I do not simply recall any ancient Greek speaks like “Downton Abbey” or “Shakespeare”, nor does it spends so much time in talking almighty nonsense. If that is not bad enough, try the romantic sparkles between Hercules and Hebe which looks like a rip-off from some cheesy and corny rom-com akin to “The Twilight Saga”. On the acting department, only Scott Adkins and Roxanne McKee are worthy to mention for.
In the midst of those bad story-treatment and corny screen moments, comes the time when our hero simply needs to jump so high at his adversaries, slow-mo, pauses and then fast-forward to hurl destructions. The action scenes are under-appreciable and poorly-staged with some bad CGIs that prove too desperate to even resemble the fascinating story-telling and the gripping moments from “300”.
This movie which is supposed to provide a dutiful insight into the younger days of Hercules is practically a laughable joke here. This inferiorly-made movie makes everything in “Wrath of the Titans” looks way superior and “Immortals” to look more stylish with the given substances. The plot itself is a shame, thoroughly chaotic and plot-holes-riddance. Written by a panel comprising of Daniel Giat, Giulio Steve, Renny Harlin and Sean Hood (“Conan the Barbarian”), the story takes the liberty of adapting the more familiar Hercules tales and decisively goes on to churn out a bad amalgamation of “Immortals”, “Troy”, “300” and “Gladiator”.
From the narrative aspect, this movie is far from been consistent and more often than not, does a poor job in treating the story with bigger prospect, respect or purpose to the characters. Many stages of the story are either skipped or merely breeze through – even that vital story about his banishment and rise as the Greek heroism symbol during the middle stint is heavily condensed with unsatisfactory exploration to give the movie plenty of morality and emotional hollows all over. Ultimately, the movie never properly gets a fair recounting or inspiring plot to this evenly-twisted tales of Hercules which I am not sure even existed.
To add in more garbage materials into the movie, the scribblers decided to give the dialogues some head-scratching moments. I do not simply recall any ancient Greek speaks like “Downton Abbey” or “Shakespeare”, nor does it spends so much time in talking almighty nonsense. If that is not bad enough, try the romantic sparkles between Hercules and Hebe which looks like a rip-off from some cheesy and corny rom-com akin to “The Twilight Saga”. On the acting department, only Scott Adkins and Roxanne McKee are worthy to mention for.
In the midst of those bad story-treatment and corny screen moments, comes the time when our hero simply needs to jump so high at his adversaries, slow-mo, pauses and then fast-forward to hurl destructions. The action scenes are under-appreciable and poorly-staged with some bad CGIs that prove too desperate to even resemble the fascinating story-telling and the gripping moments from “300”.
"The Legend of Hercules" stars Kellan Lutz ("The Twilight Saga"), Scott Adkins ("The Expendables 2"), Liam McIntyre ("Spartacus" TV series) and Roxanne McKee, presented by Summit Entertainment and Lionsgate via Rainfilm Sdn Bhd, and directed by Renny Harlin ("Cliffhanger") from his screenplay with Daniel Giat, Giulio Steve and Sean Hood (“Conan the Barbarian”). The movie is rated P13 and is released in Malaysia since January 9, 2014. The movie runs about 98 minutes.
MY RATING:
Story: 1.5
Casts: 2.0
Cinematography: 2.5
Effects: 2.5
GREEN-TEA-O-METER: 7.1/20.0
