Say somebody comes to me and says, 'Chris,
you've been tasked with drafting our first ever all Hollywood
tackle football team, but ex-athletes are out'. That
means no Dwayne Johnson, no Brian Bosworth, no Bill
Romonowski, no Terry Crews… nobody like that. Just
actors. So to speak. Well, I'm drafting Kellen
Lutz in the first round. Fullback maybe? But
probably better served as an outside linebacker where his size
and speed can be best put to use. This is one big,
musclebound dude. I felt I should start out by saying
something nice about Kellen because it doesn't look like I'm
going to be saying too many nice things about him and his
movie 'The Legend of Hercules'.
Our film starts with hordes of Greeks… I guess… running from
stuff and then falling down. This was meant to simulate
the horrors of war, but it actually stimulated the wonders of
laughter. Eventually we settle in on King Amphitryon, as
played by FCU favorite Scott Adkins, who challenges the ruler
of Typhos… I think… to a mano-a-mano battle for all the
marbles. This dude gets his ass kicked. We could
tell by just looking at the two of them that this was a sucker
bet. Anyway, Amphitryon claims his kingdom, but more
importantly he claims the queen Alcmeme (Roxanne McKee) and
promptly knocks her up with child. Thing is, Alcmeme
hates the king and begs for guidance from the gods, which
basically gets her raped by Zeus, and results in the birth of
her child Hercules. Amphitryon ain't dumb though, he
knows that baby isn't his and he thinks Hercules is a stupid
name anyway and calls the kid something else. I don't
remember what.
So this kid not yet called Hercules grows up to be and strong
and looks like Kellen Lutz. He loves the princess Hebe
(Gaia Weiss) something awful, the two of them riding horses
and incessantly splashing in water, but alas Hebe has been
betrothed to Herc's slimy brother Iphicles (Liam
Garrigan). In fact, these two tried to make a break for
it, but alas they fail at that, and for his hubris this man
not called Hercules is dispatched by the dude that's not his
father on a doomed mission to nowhere in particular.
Adventure is afoot for big Herc, though they
are not necessarily Herculean adventures, or at least they
aren't the ones I read about. No, this Hercules has
adventures that have to lead to Rome and gladiatorial battles,
even though I think he's Greek… but whatever… he has to make
it back home to stop the wedding of his betrothed and his
awful brother. And he can only do that by claiming
his birthright as the Son of ZEUS!!! And giving
demotivating speeches. I'm not looking for William
Wallace styled oratory or anything, but jeez Herc, you gotta
pep up these rah rah speeches up a bit.
Trying to figure out what went wrong with director Renny
Harlin's version of Hercules is easy. The more
challenging part is trying to figure out what it did
right. Scott Adkins for one. While we've always
enjoyed Mr. Adkins work here at the FCU, we have had to admit
that he is, at best, understated as an actor… until I saw him
overact his ass off in this movie. I'm not saying he
acted particularly well, but my man went for it and it
showed. This also leads us to the unfortunate conclusion
that Scott Adkins was the best actor in the movie, and cherish
him as we do, this is not necessarily a good thing. The
movie was also pretty brief and there was action
aplenty. Those things all in itself at least made 'The
Legend of Hercules' something I could watch without wanting to
kill myself.
As far as what didn't go right, I'm thinking one of the first
mistakes it made was actually calling this movie
'Hercules'. You see Hercules has a pretty well-known
history and story arc so maybe one should at least try to
stick to just a little bit of that. If they had called
this movie 'Muscly dude beats up people', then we wouldn't
have had these minor expectations, but they didn't call it
that. Hercules did battle the fabled Nemean Lion… choked
it out like they were in the octagon… but unfortunately the
CGI lion looked way worse than the animatronic Lion that
showed up in Jumani twenty years ago. We've come so far…
And also director Harlin figured the best way to make his
movie was to check out '300' and just roll with that general
look, though the only look he seem to settle on was the
slo-mo. So much slo-mo. No blood splatter or
nudity but lots and lots of slow-mo of no blood or
nudity. Blood splatter and nudity wouldn't have made
this movie better, but it would've made it more memorable.
We could also lay a lot the blame on young Mr. Lutz, and he
was no shining star in this movie, showing about as much
charisma as a turnip, but the poor man was saddled with some
pretty lousy dialog in this one. Besides, I've seen much
better use of this man's particular gifts such as in the movie
'Arena', which is similar to this one in that it also has a
muscly dude beating people up, but they didn't make the
mistake of calling it Hercules. And it had titties and
blood splatter. Thus I remember it better.
So if you want to see my main man Scott Adkins overact or
watch a muscly dude choke out a stuffed Lion, then here it
is. Otherwise, jump in a time machine and check out Lou
Ferrigno's version of Hercules which is way worse than this
one, but way funnier.
