Saturday 29 March 2014

"The Legend of Hercules" (The Guardian 28/03/14)


The Legend of Hercules **
Dir: Renny Harlin. With: Kellan Lutz, Scott Adkins, Gaia Weiss. 99 mins. Cert: 12A.

Coming soon: The Rock playing Zeus’s son in un film de Brett Ratner. Now showing: this lightweight yet not unlikable spoiler from Cliffhanger’s Renny Harlin, which pitches all its mythology around the level of the average One Tree Hill episode. Buff Kellan Lutz – Twilight’s third vampire from the left, here dipped in Bisto – is exiled to Egypt for canoodling with the bodacious Hebe, Princess of Crete (Gaia Weiss); once he’s taken captive, we essentially get a teenybop Gladiator, with Kenneth Cranham an obvious Oliver Reed substitute. Harlin keeps it commendably brisk, and insists upon the primacy of flesh-and-blood performers duking it out on non-virtual sets, perhaps because his CGI is makeshift at best. Conceived for 3D, yet screening mostly in twod, no-one seems to have high hopes for it – though it might well help to pass a wet afternoon when it shows up on Netflix fifteen minutes from now.

The Legend of Hercules is now playing in cinemas nationwide.

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