Immortals

There are so many great shots in IMMORTALS, that one can almost forgive all the shots in between. But Tarsem Singh's occasionally striking, dreadfully inaccurate film feels like a slump. It's boring, and then Singh throws in some great shot. But too much of the film is muddled in darkness, and incomprehensible battle scenes which consist of a sea of men thrashing their swords in every direction on an oddly corpseless battlefield. The film follows Henry Cavill's Theseus, the famed killer of the minotaur in a giant maze. Here, Theseus is looked over by Zeus (John Hurt & Luke Evans) and eventually set off on a quest to find a mythical bow that aided the Gods in their banishment of the wicked Titans. King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) wants to release the Titans and...rule the world...but Theseus, with the Gods on his side, is due to prevail. Oddly though, Zeus, who has been meddling in Theseus' life in the body of an old man, forbids his fellow gods in meddling. He evil murders some of the gods, and in the final battle scene, the gods fight well, but die pretty easily, which is completely and totally ridiculous. Furthermore, Theseus, who is supposed to be our man, loses so many battles it's laughable. He's not a good hero, and is always calling for the gods to help. The film is only worth seeing for a handful of striking shots, but that's about it. Singh's aesthetics are wonderfully colored, but when they don't work perfectly, they don't really work at all.

★★ out of Five