Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
11/25/11
It does feel, in this Occupy
Wall Street era, like we live in a world of wealthy Gods and working class
Mortals, so it’s no surprise that the Greek Gods have been staging a cinematic
comeback the last few years in the Clash
of the Titans and Percy Jackson
franchises. The latest outing for Zeus and company is Tarsem Singh’s
Immortals, which plugs them into a visually-stunning 300-flavored
spectacle of beefcake and disembowlment. Pumped up a tad with 3D
effects that once again fail to live up to their potential (the filmmakers
briefly shot in 3D but then opted for conversion to save money), Immortals
benefits from a strong cast and a well-drawn conflict between Good and
Evil. It’s a little slow to get rolling and snatches commerce from
the jaws of art in the closing scenes, but the Gods have had worse big-screen
vehicles than this reasonably entertaining populist bloodbath.
Years ago, there were only
Immortals, but those beings learned a horrible fact: while nothing
else could kill them, they could take each other’s lives. And they
did, in a bloody civil war whose victors dubbed themselves Gods, entombing
their defeated foes the Titans in a cage at the heart of a mountain.
Legend says that only a special bow with magical arrows can open this cage,
and now, in the time of man, the cruel King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) leads
his army in a relentless search for it. Having lost his family to
disease, he blames the Gods, and seeks to unleash the Titans to destroy
them and rule the world. As his forces approach the village of Theseus
(Henry Cavill), soldiers arrive to escort the people to hide at that very
mountain where, unbeknownst to Man, the Titans are captive. Theseus
and his mother are not permitted to travel with the first group of refuges:
she was raped years ago and no man would marry her, making their family
outcasts. But he is no ordinary Greek: no less than Zeus (Luke
Evans) himself has been guiding him since childhood in the guise of an
Old Man (John Hurt). The Gods are forbidden to use their powers to
influence the affairs of men unless the Titans have been released, but
the King of the Gods believes Theseus to be the one who can defeat Hyperion
and save mankind. After the King sacks their village and takes him
prisoner, he joins forces with soldier Stavros (Stephen Dorff) and oracle
Phaedra (Freida Pinto) on a quest to recover the bow before Hyperion finds
it. Can Theseus accept his destiny, or will mankind face the wrath
of the Titans?
Like a magical arrow pointed
at its climax, Immortals is all about Gods vs. Titans, Theseus vs.
Hyperion and their respective armies against each other from the word GO,
so it’s somewhat less than captivating to watch it slowly set all these
pieces into place. Even the movie clearly realizes it better get
down to business faster than it planned as abrupt transitions and awkward
looping patch over more than one obviously missing scene. But once
it gets rolling, the human storyline is unusually kicky for this sort of
enterprise precisely because it presents us with such a compelling contrast
among the combatants. Theseus is the All-American, er, All-Greek
hero who believes in freedom and righteousness above all else and wants
the same for everyone else (the movie gets a nice subtextual lift out of
the fact that Cavill is shooting a movie as Superman while we’re watching
Immortals). Meanwhile, Hyperion is tyranny and oppression
personified, obsessed with spreading his DNA by raping the conquered, subjecting
his prisoners to unspeakable tortures (the boiling statue gambit plays
far better here than it did in Red Riding
Hood last spring), and even mutilating his own men. The movie
gets considerable mileage out of both men’s own belief that they’ll be
immortal, Theseus through the fame of his deeds or Hyperion through his
progeny. Cavill and Rourke do a lot to elevate the material, and
when they are locked in mortal combat in the climax, it really feels like
there’s a lot riding on it, just as the battle between their forces below
is over a lot more than who gets to hoist their flag.
Not so successful is the
eternal struggle between Gods and Titans. I can understand that the
Titans have probably gone quite mad in their Dark Ages prison, lined up
row after row in shackles with a pole running through their mouths in that
cage for untold millennia, a punishment so inhuman it’s hard to imagine
the Gods we meet having dished it out when they could simply have killed
the Titans instead. In fact, virtually everything the Gods do seems
designed to give their opponents a fighting chance when they could easily
finish them off, because the crazed, dialog-free, animalistic Titans never
seem like a real match for the Gods unless they let them be, and there’s
no reason to believe Hyperion could in any way benefit from unleashing
them on the countryside, since they’d presumably kill indiscriminately.
But there’s a moment as the film’s two main climactic battles are coming
to a close when it seems like writers Charlie & Vlas Parlapanides are
about to do something unbelievably bold (Kellen Lutz has a single terrific
line reading as Poseidon that really sells what doesn’t quite happen).
And then the movie looks over its shoulder, sees studio executives determined
that there must be an Immortals 2, and then chickens out and closes
with a sequence that’s practically an I2 infomercial.
Immortals is being
sold as a visual stunner, and Singh brings his usual flair, although it’s
hard to get too invested in the unique look of a story so conventional.
And given what could have been, the 3D is quite disappointing, all the
more so because of the few moments that actually do pop, presumably the
ones actually shot with the cameras. The costumes are OUT THERE,
and some of them work. But there’s a weird getup where Hyperion’s
dressed like a Venus Flytrap is eating him that’s simply unacceptable,
and the Gods are mostly dressed for an 80’s perfume commercial on Mt. Olympus.
That said, the actors do
a great job plowing through their dubious looks. Evans and Hurt combine
to make a solid Zeus and Isabel Lucas does a good job even if her Athena
seems so much like Aphrodite I wouldn’t be surprised if they redubbed her
name in post. It’s been forever and a day since Dorff had a major
role in a real Hollywood movie, and he gives the proceedings a significant
boost with his casual energy. And as much as Pinto failed to convince
as an ethically-conflicted veterinarian in Rise
of the Planet of the Apes, she’s oddly more comfortable as a seer.
Immortals’ action
is plentiful and its bloodshed massive: it’s done a good job creating
an organic combination of 300 and Clash
of the Titans without being quite as good as either movie. But
it’s a diverting time-killer and a nice chance to measure the next Superman
in his first blockbuster leading role. Now if only those Wall Street
Titans would get their movie studios to work on a Greek God movie worthy
of the subject… |
