DIRECTOR:
Brett Ratner LEAD CAST: Dwayne Johnson, Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell,
Joseph Fiennes, Peter Mullan, John Hurt SCREENWRITER: Ryan J. Condal
& Evan Spiliotopoulos PRODUCER: Brett Ratner, Barry Levine, Beau Flynn EDITOR:
Mark Helfrich & Julia Wong
MUSICAL DIRECTOR:
Fernando Velazquez GENRE: Action
& Adventure, Science Fiction & Fantasy CINEMATOGRAPHER: Dante
Spinotti DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount
Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer Pictures LOCATION: United States RUNNING TIME: 99 minutes
Technical assessment: 3.5 Moral assessment: 2.5
Moving on from the painful loss of his
family, Hercules (Dwayne Johnson) with his friends become mercenaries riding on
the legend of the demigod Hercules and his countless impossible pursuits. The
stories, whether true or fabricated, help to scare his enemies and make him the
most sought after hero. Princess Ergenia (Rebecca Ferguson), on
behalf of her father, Lord Cotys (John Hurt), king of Thrace, requests Hercules
to defend Thrace against the supposed centaur demon army of Rheseus
(Santelmann) and promises to pay him gold equal to his weight.
Hercules trains the Thracian army and defeats Rheseus—who
turns out to be just a man on a horse. Later, Hercules discovers his team has
been used by Lord Cotys in the latter’s greed to establish an empire. He
refuses to be part of the king’s future plan and decides to put a stop to his
greed only to be confronted by the bitter truth about his family’s murder which
challenges him to embrace his true calling.
Hercules is a mash-up of the Greek Myth
Labors of Hercules and the graphic
novel Hercules and the Thracian Wars. The movie offers an
interesting plot and script equipped with humor and honest portrayals by
McShane and Hurt. But while buffed and didactic Johnson is pleasant, he is as
stiff and bland as a rock during his pep talks and supposedly inspirational
moments. His Hercules is not engaging enough and is easily overthrown by all
the cinematic hostility. Cinematography is dynamic as an action movie should be
and production design justifies the setting of the Athens period. But neither
the action sequences nor computer-generated scenes offer anything new or epic
save for the body count and body parts spewing out blood all over the screen. Hercules’ greatest achievement is
bringing down the massive supernatural legend of a demigod into bite-sized
logical stories of a hero. Hercules
is good but not great enough to merit a standing ovation in its genre.
No matter how painful an experience
Hercules may have had, he still chooses to move on and remain positive in
carrying out a mission such as taking the task of training the soldiers to
fight and to win. Though it is a compensated task that Hercules accepted
together with his friends, his team ensured that their trainees would be
equipped not only with the skills to fight but with the right attitude and
values and trust in God. The film shows the importance of teamwork in the
context of friendship, brotherhood, trust, concern, support, and fidelity to one
another during tough times. Hercules is about heroism. But how does
one become a hero? Through a great packaging and hard sell marketing which
blurs the lines between what is real and what is fantasy? Through overrated
stories of one’s accomplishments? While the film shows courage and strength to
be the outer qualities of a legend, it underlines more the fidelity to one’s
innate nature of service and selflessness as the more important qualities of a
hero. Whether Hercules is really the son of Zeus or just an ordinary mortal is
irrelevant once he chose to defend the weak and save the innocent. But then
again, a hero takes a higher road of forgiveness and peace—which unfortunately
Hercules is incapable of when he chose to murder the people behind his family’s
fate. The movie is violent and graphic and not appropriate for young children.
Themes are also obscured and need adult guidance and direction.
