Immortals

        Immortals is just one of those movies.  You get exactly what you expect.  It’s like an incredibly giant piece of chocolate cake.  You know it’s not good for you and you know you shouldn’t eat it, but you go ahead and do it anyway.  And just like a rich dessert, you feel slightly queasy afterward.  

Immortals is a Greek epic film that desperately wants to be the movie ‘300’.  It values style over substance and visual over story.  I have to admit that it is an optic feast of style and coolness, but alas it isn’t anything that we haven’t seen before and it wasn’t done anywhere near as well as ‘300’ (the Frank Miller masterpiece).  Whenever you have a film try to copy another film’s success it rarely provides anything satisfying.

The story recounts the quest of the mad King Hyperion (played psychotically by Mickey Rourke [he really has found his acting niche as the creepy tough guy]) to retrieve a magical bow that he will use to release the Titans (it helps to have an understanding of Greek Mythology to understand some of the motivations here).  He seeks to reignite the war between the Titans and the Olympian Gods.  Hyperion will raze every town necessary in order to acquire the bow.  He will even commit sacrilege against the Gods by pillaging one of their temples in order to acquire the virginal Oracle (Freda Pinto with an Indian accent that didn’t seem out of place) who can direct him to the bow. 

Into this tableau, we are introduced to a downtrodden peasant whose mountainside village is fleeing the onslaught of Hyperion’s armies.  Theseus (Henry Cavill [the man who will portray Superman next year]) is a scrappy young mamma’s boy with a spray tan, lot’s of coconut body oil, and apparently lots of time to spend on a Bowflex.  He does not care for the aristocracy in his village and is ultimately cast out after defending his mother’s honor.  It’s is not until he comes across the virginal Oracle (I don’t mean to keep using the word virginal but they did in the movie so I feel compelled to do so here) that he realizes that he has a greater destiny of opposing the evil King Hyperion.  The Oracle’s visions of his future guide his path that will lead to glory or despair.

The plot becomes less coherent and contrived from there.  The movie focuses excessively on the super hero like Greek gods and their epic slow motion battles.  Manly men do manly things as are wont to happen in Greek mythology and of course the Good Theseus finally meets the Evil Hyperion.  

I don’t mean to dwell on ‘300’ while doing a review of another movie, but the envy of that film in this was palpable.  Where ‘300’ was ground breaking, this film just felt recycled.  It’s the same lack of satisfaction you get when you realize you are eating a Hydrox cookie instead of an actual Oreo.  

If you want to go and be mesmerized by style and ambience  (even if a lot is creepy), then go right ahead and enjoy your dessert.  There’s nothing wrong with that; chow down.  But, if you are going expecting a main course then feast elsewhere.  This movie provides no nutritional value.

I give this film * 1/2 stars