Movie Review: The Legend of Hercules

By: Nikki

Summit’s latest offering, a retelling of the story of Hercules, unfortunately left a lot to be desired. For being an action movie, it was rather boring and just never really picked up at any point. When the eye-roll inducing “romantic” scenes last longer than the battle scenes, it’s not really a good sign. It also seemed like the storyline was just a mash-up of other sword and sandal films.

If you have any knowledge of Greek mythology, you’ll know something is wrong pretty much right at the beginning of his conception. Hell, the campy TV series with Kevin Sorbo was sadly more accurate on that front. I’d get into all the things that were wrong, but we might be here longer than the actual movie.

If you just want to see Kellan Lutz with his shirt off for an hour, then knock your socks off. Sadly, however, even his finely-tuned body couldn’t save this film. I couldn’t help but be distracted by his god-awful (no pun intended) over-cooked tan and whatever bizarre accent he was trying to pull off. The supporting cast was fairly bland, with the exception of Liam McIntyre as Sotiris, Herc’s trusted side-kick. Hardly a surprise though, as he should be familiar with the genre after holding the title role in Starz’s Spartacus: War of the Damned.

The beginning is reminiscent of scenes from 300 and the entire mid-section of the film was basically like watching a poorly re-enacted version of Gladiator. I’m not talking ‘creatively borrowed’ here, I’m talking it was literally almost the exact plot. Sold into slavery to fight, old guy who owns them agrees to set him free if he wins, he ends up back home fighting in the big arena… sound familiar anyone? The grim ending basically leaves you feeling like the whole journey was pointless.
If you’re really in need of some Hercules, I suggest you save your time and money for Bret Ratner’s version starring The Rock set for release this summer. If anything else, it couldn’t possibly be any worse than this.

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