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Movie review: “Beowulf”
BY MAGGIE SCOTT
Perhaps you’re thinking, “enough already with the hero movies.” Maybe you’ve just about had it with blood and gore. Could be that you don’t think Hollywood’s got anything different to say or do with the genre. In that case, “Beowulf “is not for you.
But, you will be missing one of the most spectacularly innovative ways of telling a story that our culture has yet devised. In the pre-modern world, legends were handed down through oral traditions; through songs. The ancient epic of the Norse hero, Beowulf, went from song to Old English on the printed page; to challenge centuries of readers’ imaginations with its kings, warriors and monsters.
Now, the adventure yields all of its ageless appeal to the world, again, in mesmerizing 3-D, performance capture (as in Polar Express) glory; thanks to the technology visionary, Robert Zemeckis. Beowulf (Ray Winstone) is the mightiest of men who “die not for gold, but for glory.”
His moment of glory is 507 A.D., on the shores of Denmark, at the mead hall of King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins); whose revels have brought another attack by the horrendously gruesome Grendel (Crispin Glover); offspring of a demonic, shape-shifting sorceress (Angelina Jolie). While the huge Grendel is a hunched, malformed, rotting mass of fury and his attacks on the King’s subjects are relentlessly vicious, the monster appears to be suffering some deep anguish.
As Hrothgar welcomes bravado-bellowing Beowulf and offers him half his kingdom’s gold and the hand of his queen (Robin Wright Penn) if Beowulf slays Grendel, their swagger is severely tested by Grendel’s mother, who butchers almost all of Beowulf’s men.
Clad only in loincloth and armed only with mighty sword, Beowulf goes to the watery cave lair of the mortally wounded Grendel and confronts the sea witch, now in a staggeringly seductive super model shape, clad only in stiletto heels. Beowulf goes for the glory and the gold; and 50 years later, he is king of a land that has not been able to lift its ancient curse. The sins of the father take the shape of a stupendous dragon, and there isn’t glory coming from this fight—just base survival.
Literally rip-roaring fun, Beowulf is an eye-popping thrill that injects fire-breathing life back into a genre trying to vanquish the curse of exhausted creativity. A Paramount Pictures release, rated PG-13 for violence, nudity, gore.
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