Beowulf, (Cert 12A, 115 mins),
Starring: Ray Winstone, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Brendan Gleeson, Robin Wright Penn, Crispin Glover
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
THE Old English poem Beowulf has bored generations of students with its impenetrable language and epic length.
So, thank goodness for director Robert Zemeckis.
He has given us an all-action adventure story with the hero Beowulf as a sort of Rambo character and impossibly beautiful women. It is more comic book than Old English.
For cinemas so equipped, it will also be showing in 3-D, giving the whole enterprise an event significance.
I saw it in the flat version where it still works remarkably well, despite the numerous scenes of spears thrust out of the screen, blood squelching in your face and items thrown willy-nilly at the audience.
The first thing to explain is that this is not live action nor even normal computer animation, but filmed using a technique known as motion capture (mocap, for short).
For this, actors wearing special suits play out their scenes on a bare stage with all the scenery and clothing added later.
While some actors are still identifiable – notably Anthony Hopkins as the king using a highly developed Welsh accent – many have their images toned up somewhat.
Ray Winstone in the title role looks very little like himself, has the body of a muscle man, and tends to fight naked.
Also naked (but with a tail) is Angelina Jolie as the local monster who seduces Beowulf.
The plot from scriptwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary is a beefed-up version of the story in which he-man Beowulf arrives to save a Danish village from a giant monster, Grendel.
Having defeated him, he then has to defeat the monster’s mother (Jolie) and finally battle a fire-breathing dragon.
The action scenes, particularly the battle with Grendel, are suitably gory with bodies being pulled apart, heads bitten off and various bloodied limbs thrown at the 3-D cameras.
The finale with the flying dragon is even more spectacular, an edge-of-the-seat confrontation with Beowulf dangling by rope from the dragon and bumping into every bit of sticky-out scenery.
The women – Grendel’s mother apart – tend to be decorative rather than part of the story, there simply to admire the hero’s courage or be part of a drunken orgy.
It is difficult to judge the acting because the mocap technique turns everyone into cardboard characters, unreal-looking and often with awkward movements.
But character is not really the thing here, but the blood-and-guts action.
It certainly allows actors to perform things they could never do in real life – and you get to see Sir Anthony’s bare bottom, too. The plot fairly steams along and it sometimes moves into unexpected directions – a swimming race between Beowulf and a competitor in which sea monsters join in the fun is typical.
Ray Winstone, it must be said, has never looked better and gone, too, is the Cor Blimey voice with his Beowulf talking in suitably heroic and epic tones.
Whether mocap alongside 3-D has a long-term future, I somewhat doubt.
For the time being, it offers a new look and something just a little bit different.
