Early official set photos from Hercules looked extremely promising. Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson all dressed up, Nemean lion draped over his shoulders, looking world weary and battle scarred with thick greying beard. This looked to be a portrait of a man who, exploits turned legend, spends the remainder of his days outlawed and alone, trailing the scorched earth of the Classical world for redemption and resolution.
At least thats what I read into it.
I'll start by saying I'm a massive fan of Mr Rock. I have the videos, the games, the tshirts. I watch his WWE matches over and over again for fun. He's a megastar, and the world - rightfully - has branded him a modern day legend. But quality movies befitting his truck load of charisma have been hard to come by. Fast franchise aside, most of his movies have been small independent affairs riding his superstar status to elevate sometimes interesting most times mediocre material to the multiplexes. Hercules could've genuinely been a new franchise of epic proportions.
It's not.
Here's the thing. You can do historical epics one of two ways - all out high drama, serious acting, classical dialogue and lashings of blood. (see Gladiator, Ben Hur, Spartacus etc. Even 300. Yes that 300.) OR you can have some fun with it, crank up the cheese, stick it in your cheek next to your tongue and play it for a royal romp (Pompeii, Thor and, yes, 300). But the one thing these movies have in common is not historical accuracy, but contextual dialogue. At no point does Russell Crowe say "Do you mind?" or Kirk Douglas sarcastically comment "I was having a moment". Even Gerard Butler never grumbled "F***ing centaurs". There's a tone of voice here that doesn't sit well with its setting, and it's an easy fix for anyone aware of the genre, and I don't mean sprinkling 'thee's' and 'thou's' around to mask the smell of the 20th century, but having a little more respect for the sense of time and place. Ultimately it's also a waste of the vast talents of John Hurt, Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell and a supremely underused basically-a-cameo Joseph Fiennes.
Which isn't this movies only flaw. Let's focus on what it does well first. The action set pieces are generally inventive, interesting and exciting, the plot takes some unexpected turns, the idea of Hercules legend being greater than life, and Herc's band of merry men each have their own individual style and stand out moments. But it's all a lot of bones and no meat. Characters personalities are underdeveloped and outside of the action what little dialogue they do get is ropey at best. The camera is too static, the sets are less epic more apathetic, and anyones motivation to do anything is both simplistic and confusing.
All of this deserves to be laid at one man's door - the director. As the one person who's job it is to bring all the individual pieces together it can only be he who takes the blame when so many of those pieces don't work. I'm a big fan of the Rush Hour movies, albeit with dwindling interest as the series went on; X-men 3 is so bad they made another movie about erasing that movie; and not much else in Brett Ratners back catalogue is worth mentioning (I do have a soft spot for Tower Heist, though the direction is so passive it may as well just be a camera on a stick with someone to press REC.) Unfortunately for Mr Rock, neither is this.
Hercules is a fascinating character, not just his labours and the multitude of mythical beasts he encounters, but his torrid personal life from bastard son of a god, his superhuman strength and the ultimate tragedy of his poisoning by step-mother-goddess and subsequent slaughter of his family, he is the ultimate tortured soul and has been severely underserved in cinema. Mr Rock seemed a perfect fit, his pure presence and sheer size scream hero and the early black and white stills threatened to deliver a truly challenging character-based action flick, one that Rocky is destined to star in. This isn't it.
It seemed like a match made on Olympus, but it never quite reached the heights of legend.
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Featuring: Dwayne Johnson, Ian McShane, John Hurt, Joseph Fiennes, Rufus Sewell
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