Immortals

Advertising itself as a kind of 300 with added Gods, director Tarsem Singh's departure into the world of fantasy violence certainly looks impressive, even if its ability to weave a narrative looks doubtful; particularly considering this is a film involving vast armies, truly ridiculous costumes, Gods, and absolutely no respect for Greek mythology.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is the sort of film where visuals come first, as the art design is very impressive and the whole thing is made to look good with the director's keen eye for visual flair. The cinematography works very well, giving the film a strange and unique glow and creating its own style. The costumes add to this visual feast too, though they do become rather silly and quite laughable at times. Overall though, surfaces gleam and the mixture of real and CG sets all combine to make an interesting and well-textured environment for the story to take place, and it does work well with the gore, which comes across in lush colours from the many fights.

The trouble is the story is simply not interesting. Zeus (John Hurt / Luke Evans) chooses Theseus (Henry Cavill) to defeat the evil king Hyperion (Micky Rourke) before he unleashes the titans upon the world. In the meantime, our hero must rescue a virgin priestess and the Gods ramble on about how they must never interfere directly in the lives of mortals (as I said, no basis in actual Greek mythology). The first problem is that the film lacks any emotional involvement whatsoever with unanimously two-dimensional characters, with aspects like Zeus spouting on about free will and how they cannot stop evil themselves being very tiresome. None of this works at either an emotional or thematic level and thus the whole thing to large extent feels rather silly. The film has a perfectly good cast but it is hard to see how they could have done anything more with the script and characters they were given. Henry Cavill's Theseus seems particularly empty, as it is hard to care for him or his plight; though he convinces in fight scenes, this hardly bodes well for his future role playing Superman. The only performance that holds any weight is John Hurt's old Zeus who as always is a wonderful screen presence. It's just a shame he's only in a couple of scenes, with Zeus transforming into a younger and rather irritating version of himself for most of the film.

The film therefore only has to rely on action and visuals to impress its audience and though they do to an extent, the action scenes could often be more impressive, as for the most part they lack the blood curdling gore of 300. Yet there is enough to keep the viewer mildly entertained for most of the film, even if the story disappoints. It's just that it doesn't seem to know where it wants to go, so that it ends up working well as a blood-and-guts-type action movie in which everything else feels flabby. That said, it's interesting artistically at least.

See Immortals at York's Reel Cinema. For more information visit http://york.reelcinemas.co.uk/?

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