Plot: Before the dawn of man or beast, immortals waged war against each other. The victors named themselves gods while the vanquished were named the Titans and imprisoned beneath Mount Tartarus. The Epirus Bow, a weapon of immense power, is lost on Earth during the war. In 1228 B.C., the mortal Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) searches for the Bow, intending to use it to release the Titans to spite the gods for failing to save his family. Hyperion captures the virgin oracle Phaedra (Freida Pinto), believing that she can find the Bow's resting place.
In a small village nearby, the inhabitants prepare to flee to Tartarus to avoid Hyperion's army. One inhabitant, Theseus (Henry Cavill), is a skilled warrior trained by his mentor, the old man (John Hurt). Theseus and his mother Aethra (Anne Day-Jones), considered undesirables because Theseus was born from Aethra being raped, are forced to stay behind by villagers and Athenian soldiers including Lysander (Joseph Morgan). Theseus ably battles multiple opponents until the Athenian officer Helios (Peter Stebbings) intervenes and discharges Lysander for his actions. Lysander travels to Hyperion, offering his service and the village's location. Hyperion accepts, but maims and castrates Lysander for being a traitor. Hyperion's forces attack Theseus' village, murdering the villagers, Aethra and taking Theseus captive *
Theseus escapes and goes out to find the legendary bow.
Review: Where to start on this mess of a film? I find this to be a very hard film to review. It does way to many things badly but still keeps you entertained through a lot of it. Lets delve into this review to dissect it.
The Bad: When this movie came out in theaters I went on several tangents of saying how bad the movie looked. The marketing was awful, and did not make you want to see this film. The recent John Carter reminds me a lot of the marketing of this film.
The plot is another major issue with the film, its not a very compelling or memorable. There is a certain character who looses all relevance at the halfway point. This is a pretty big fault because, they are a major character. It is a film of the 300 generation. It is truly style over substance. 300 had a much more epic and memorable plot. This brings me to issue two, the style while some works (i'll get to that later) it also tries too hard and can be too eccentric. The costuming looks just silly at times. Mainly Micky rourkes helmet, it looks like Jack the Bunny from Donnie Darko. The golden face piece looks pretty cool, but the helmet doesn't work and doesn't make you fear him.
The Good: As I just went over the style while it doesn't work at times, it works WAY more than it doesn't. At several times, I saw scenes and just mouthed "wow" There is no doubt that Tarsem is a fantastic visual director. As many saw during his film The Cell. What works well for its credit is the action scenes are done really well. The finally fight scenes between Theseus and Hyperion and The Gods and the titans are fantastic fights. They are well shot scenes and the latter scene is stylistically fantastic. Its very evident that Tarsem wanted to use these scenes as a highlight of this film. It deserves to be mentioned that Micky Rourke is really frighting and intimating as hyperion when he is not where that stupid helmet.
Recommended: Yes, as long as you aren't expecting something deep or profound. Stylistically fantastic, really shallow plotwise. Check it out.
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