Hercules ** (2014, Dwayne Johnson, John Hurt, Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell) – Movie Review

The always likeable Dwayne Johnson is inevitable star casting as the Greek demigod Hercules, Zeus’s son, who has triumphed in his legendary 12 labours but is still haunted by the loss of his family at the hands of the evil King Eurystheus. Hercules survives by finding comfort in fighting bloody battles as a sword-for-hire mercenary heading a band of six similar oddball outsider folk, among them Ian McShane’s Amphiaraus, Rufus Sewell’s Autolycus, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal’s Atalanta, and Reece Ritchie’s callow kid Iolaus. John Hurt co-stars as the King of Thrace Lord Cotys, who seeks his aid in defeating a tyrannical warlord for a potful of gold. But his motives are as dodgy as most everything about this movie, testing Hercules and his crew to the max. Rebecca Ferguson plays Lord Cotys’s daughter Ergenia and Peter Mullan is his henchman Sitacles. So it’s good that at least the cast’s full of proper actors. However, unfortunately, there’s is no doubt that this is quite a bad movie, though it’s not actually truly terrible. It might have been more entertaining if it were. We could have had lots of fun at its expense. Instead, it takes all the CGI-heavy battles seriously and there are a couple of impressive, quite exciting biggies, though there’s no blood, and this kind of nasty, gory thing needs more realism in the 300 mould. Grungy generally replaces gory in the battle scenes. Johnson is fine in action, though sorely stretched in the acting department as his dialogue is very ropey, and he’s got no snappy one-liners to cheer up the general doom and gloom. I’m very pleased to say there is humour in the movie, but mostly in the corner of McShane’s wryly witty character Amphiaraus. This is OK, but McShane isn’t a natural comedian or funny man. I feel sorry for all the actors, mostly strung out to dry on the poor lines they have to chew over and give portentous meaning to. It’s not their fault all this is so dreary. Again Hurt if OK, but a more outrageous, campy performance from an even more outrageous, campy performer would cheer things up, and Hurt’s taking it all seriously and has got an awful lot to do. However, the actors get by. The only actor who actually crashes and burns, sadly, is Jo Fiennes, who deserves the Worst Supporting Actor Razzie as King Eurystheus. Misjudging and mistiming it, he’s terrible. Brett Ratner directs efficiently and anonymously, cutting the film down to a spare 95 minutes just when you expect a two hours-plus epic. This could be a sign of heavy cutting. But the brevity is welcome. Any more and it would be ‘no more!’ Even so, it feels quite long for the story it’s trying to tell. Johnson would have been better doing Transformers 4, and possibly its star Mark Wahlberg might have been a better fit here. You don’t need an actor in the role of Hercules, just a young muscleman hunk with a great body. They understood this is the 50s in the days of Steve Reeves. But then his Hercules movies, Hercules (1957) and Hercules Unchained (1959), though popular and quite fun, weren’t much good either. http://derekwinnert.com/hercules-1957-steve-reeves-classic-film-review-922/ http://derekwinnert.com/hercules-unchained-1959-steve-reeves-classic-film-review-923/ © Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/