This week's film was Immortals, one of the biggest let downs of the year. The effects and combat scenes were great, but there was no story. The best I can rate this film is 2/5, and that's being generous.
The best part of the film was the combat scenes and special effects. They were spectacular, provided you enjoy the sight of heads rolling and blood spraying. The combat was short and brutal. Heads rolled and people died. Short, simple, and pleasurable. However, the combat is relatively short compared to the rest of the film, and, though it is wonderful, there is too little to have any hope of producing something worth watching.
However, the enjoyment of the combat was not enough to redeem this sad film. Whoever the writers were should have been fired long before the film went into production. There was no semblance of story in the film whatsoever. I can only think that the story Immortals was supposed to tell was Theseus and the Minotaur. The other characters made no sense if this was the case though. King Hyperion, the Epirus bow, and Titans never played a part in this myth. Whatever, I can tolerate a different interpretation of a 2000 year old myth. What I can't stand is an interpretation that has no depth! The characters were all stagnant, the character dialogue was monotonous, and the plot was horrid. I understand revenge is a great motivator, but come on, another one? Boring.
What's worse, the movie is about two hours long. Nothing happens for the first half hour, then some people die quickly, then nothing happens for another half hour, then Poseidon causes a tidal wave, then nothing happens for half an hour, then Apollo kills some people (coolest part of the film, might I add), then nothing happens for 20 minutes, then Theseus kills Hyperion and becomes a god. Confused? So am I.
As usual, here's the link to the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Once again I'm forced to agree with the dissenters. There is no action, and no life in the movie; just blindly moving from one scene to the next connected by characters only, since the story doesn't have the strength to bind the scenes. Since this movie is just that wonderful, I have two favorite quotes this week: Boston Globe's Ty Bur's review, which, I am sad to say, is dead on to this movie; and MSN Movie's Kathleen Murphy's review, for this movie can be viewed as nothing but dead, and felt as nothing more than a funeral to what had the potential to be the best movie of the year.
