REVIEW: Hercules

The WWE is perhaps the most bizarre, abstract soap-opera in TV history and The Rock is their Phil Mitchell: a solid, dependable source of drama and general mayhem. I haven’t sampled its pleasures in about 10 years, but I’m still filled with a childish glee when I recall his threats to turn various things sideways and shove them up certain candy-asses. He also remains the professional wrestler with the most respectable acting career.

Now I hear you scoff but who else does he have to compete with? John Cena is working his hardest to keep the Sommerfield action-movie bargain bin trade alive and I’m given to understand that a global initiative to confiscate and destroy every episode of Hogan Knows Best is gaining serious ground. Dwayne Johnson on the other hand, despite some rather unfortunate roles in sub-sub-par ‘family’ films (Tooth Fairy) and silly action movies, is being recognised more and more as a genuinely talented screen presence. His hosting appearances on Saturday Night Live have proven that he’s very funny and that he looks damn good in sequins, Welcome to the Jungle (or The Rundown, depending where you are) remains the best action-comedy set in the Amazon and he was far and away the only good thing about The Scorpion King. Now he’s turned his biggest role to date in Brett Ratner’s new heavyweight rendition of Hercules. Is it anything groundbreaking? No. Does it do everything it sets out to do? More or less. Will it elevate Dwayne Johnson beyond a mere competent action man? IT DOESN’T MATTER.

The film makes the wise decision not to follow the story of the 12 labors laid down by the original myth, since each task would only get around 10 minutes and one of them consisted of cleaning 30 years’ worth of cow shit out of a stable. Instead it chooses to go the route of keeping Hercules’s godlike origins speculative, suggesting that he was just a particularly capable warrior who used to the legend to incite fear in his enemies and increase his chances of getting work.

Rather than acting alone, Hercules is flanked by a colourful (and exceptionally cast) band of warriors, including the prophetic Amphiaraus (Ian McShane), who swaggers around the battlefield buoyed with the confidence that he knows exactly when, where and how he’s going to die. There’s also the money-obsessed Autolycus (Rufus Sewell, having all sorts of fun), the feral Tydeus (Askel Hennie) and the Amazon warrior Atlanta, played by Norwegian actress Ingrid Bolsø Berda, who manages to strike the perfect balance between beautiful and terrifying.

They are drafted by the King of Thrace (John Hurt) to track down and defeat a rebel warlord who has been threatening the city with an army of alleged mythical beasts, since they believe that to be Hercules’s bread and butter. In actual fact all the monsters he faced down during his labors turned out to be fake, so he’s really more of a Greek, muscle-bound Scooby-Doo, but in this instance things become more complicated than he’d bargained for.

It’s pretty cliched, but still more interesting and unpredictable than these things tend to be and Johnson carries the film with real bravado, never allowing himself to be eclipsed by the old school British thesps around him. But we didn’t come here to see The Rock melt our hearts, we came here to see him punch things into other things and there’s plenty of that to go around. He spends most of the film clad in his legendary lion’s pelt and every time he pulls it up over his head it means shit’s about to get real, comparable to Ash Ketchum pulling his cap around.

The action is well planned out and excellently shot, Ratner’s always been pretty good at this kind of thing and he doesn’t miss a beat here. You’re always certain of where everyone is and what’s going on, the camerawork is steady and the action is uncluttered. An early battle scene between Thrace’s ragtag army and a horde of screaming, semi-nude Scroobius Pip lookalikes is the highlight. The CGI is of a fairly high standard, sparing as it is, it’s used to the greatest effect during the prologue when the labors are recounted. Thematically the film never loses sight of the whole idea of living up to your legend and while at times the insistence on maintaining that Hercules is a good man can seem a little unneeded/safe, it means that the story never becomes too muddled, convoluted or serious, there’s humour throughout and it offsets things nicely.

It’d be really easy for a film like this to get buried, especially when there are other, higher-minded but equally thrilling things on general release at the moment, but I’d say it deserves your attention. Silly, overblown action movies have their place and the ones that recognise said fact are always the ones that get the formula right. Stallone is still convinced that if he keeps throwing action stars of varying significance into a big blender a decent film will eventually emerge (it won’t) and I can’t remember the last big thriller that wasn’t Indonesian which really made a lasting impact.

This is good, honest fun, everybody knows what they’re doing and all the talented actors on the roster make the most of the easy material and absolutely go to town with it, McShane is particularly good. If you felt like your summer was in dire need of more people being smashed over the head with giant clubs, look no further.