Released: July 25, 2014. Directed by: Brett Ratner. Starring: Dwayne Johnson, John Hurt, Ian McShane. Runtime: 98 min.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is easily one of the biggest wrestler-turned-actor success stories to date. He’s branched out of those mildly entertaining WWE films to bigger things, and even in roles where he’s more Dwayne Johnson than his The Rock persona; meaning he gives a more dramatically involved performance, rather than one where he is just the muscle.
This brings us to him playing the titular Hercules in Brett Ratner’s new film Hercules based on Steve Moore’s graphic novel Hercules: The Thracian Wars, which is why it has a similar, but less tame, gruesome style to that of Frank Miller’s 300. I think it’s hard to not have a similar style when they are both graphic novels and similar bad-ass stories.
Overall, Hercules has a much weaker narrative. Basically, Hercules is a sword-for-hire (a bounty hunter) where he and his posse are promised their weight in gold if they can defeat a tyrannical war lord, a lacklustre character named Rhesus, for the King of Thrace (John Hurt) and his daughter.
The important people in Hercules’ friends group is a wise Amphiaraus (Ian McShane, who actually brings the most humour out of any of the characters); a lovely Atalanta (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal); Autolycus (Rufus Sewell); the strange Tydeus (Askel Hennie), who seems to be more animal than man; and his nephew Iolaus (Reece Ritchie), who never really gets in on the action and is instead a storyteller of all the great things his uncle has done.
And most of those things are great – and told with lavish style, especially his twelve labours. I would have loved to have seen another film about those, because they were just great scenes. Also great are two brief, but finely choreographed, war scenes that are plain to a fault.
The film’s final thirty minutes is the most compelling part of the film, because it’s actually when the narrative feels like it finds any coherence. Before that, it’s quite snooze-worthy save a few scenes, and it’s not a great film if it takes an hour to possess any meaty storytelling.
As for the performances, Johnson’s is the only notable one. Here, he is definitely more The Rock thanks to his intense training regimen prior to filming. And also due to Brett Ratner’s impulse to always show The Rock’s abs and never let him have a shirt. His character development, like the fact that he doesn’t know what actually happened the night his family died, is strong. The performance is easily his most dedicated to date.
He is powerful in the film’s most iconic scene (one that demanded eight takes, in which he blacked out after each), but other times I couldn’t take him seriously. This is when he has a lion’s hyde on his head, accompanied with his beard made out of yak testicle hair. You read that right.
Score: 50/100
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