The Case for Mortal Gods

"In the style of 300" is not always a phrase that brings a huge amount of anticipation.  Sure, there will be lots of beautiful women, shirtless men, slow motion action scenes, and a fair amount of brutality and blood, but these are not always good things.

In the case of Immortals though, they are.  Well, its more that Immortals has a pretty impressive cast that can pull all of the above off.  I refused to see Clash of the Titans (on the big screen, so far) because I have no faith in Sam Worthington's abilities, but I knew very little of Henry Cavill, soon to be Superman, and so I was willing to give it a shot.

And my leap of faith was rewarded.  I have no idea how Cavill will pull off a Clark Kent (still a fan of how the strapping Brandon Routh stepped into Christopher Reeve's awkward shoes) as, playing Theseus, he was a buff, square jawed hero with a good heart but no other weakness.  But as solid a performer as he was, the real acting honours had to go elsewhere. 

The 3D effects (and 7.1 surround sound) might have been impressive, but that all paled into insignificance whenever the heavenly Freida Pinto, playing the oracle Phaedra, came on the screen.  Perhaps there were a couple of metres of gauze between her face and the camera, and any imperfections were digitally edited out, but this woman is absolutely stunning.  And only once was her divine botty on display - for all the skin and gore, this was definitely not like the TV series Spartacus.

Stephen Dorff was also along as the wisecracking Stavros, but he wasn't given a huge amount to do, so perhaps it was more my soft spot for him that elevated his efforts above Cavill in the acting stakes.  Oddly enough, the gods themselves were all pretty dull and lifeless, though John Hurt as the Old Man makes a very good storyteller, though he has been playing that role now for years, so he is well practiced.

No, the real star of the film was the resurgent Mickey Rourke as the mad King Hyperion.  His low growl and imposing physique made the King incredibly threatening but, impressively, remarkably engaging.  He was brutal, had a strict moral code (of his own), was unswerving in his belief, inspirational to his men, and felt like a mortal that could threaten the existence of the gods themselves.  His motivation for releasing the entrapped Titans and so that they might destroy the Olympians make complete sense (well, within the confines of the movie), and I was more than half hoping that he would end victorious - not because I disliked Theseus, more because Rourke (and I mean Rourke) was so cool. 

The film is definitely not perfect.  It drags an awful lot in places, mainly in some of the slow motion action scenes, and there is a fairly awful rousing speech by Theseus to the Hellenics that made me want to either hit the mute button or fast forward to the next scene.  Greek mythology is not treated with a huge amount of respect, which could offend the purists (I can't claim to be an expert, but I was able to overlook most of the liberties that I noticed).  The peacemakers are definitely not blessed in this film; and the war makers seem to have a pretty lazy way about them, allowing the enemy to run around pretty easily unless they are engaged in battle. 

But this was never going to be the cinematic equivalent of A Brief History of Time.  The film exists to provide action and look good, and it does all that and remains engaging thanks to the amazing cast.  Oddly enough, this may be a film I get later on DVD  - or perhaps BluRay, to really be able appreciate those visuals.

Verdict:  Immortals will never live eternally in the annals of movie greats, but it was a great 3D big sound epic.  Sure, the ending was on the cheesy side of naffness and really quite disappointing, and it was a tad on the slow side, but it hit several of my buttons, enough for me to really enjoy it.  7.5 bows and arrows from the Dungeons and Dragons 1980s cartoon series out of 10.