The Legend of Hercules is a big hunk o’ cheese

Growing up, I remember watching the Americanized version of the Italian Hercules movies with Steve Reeves and various other actors playing the mythical hero (and sometimes a completely different character who was renamed Hercules for American audiences). They were exciting at the time and still hold a certain amount of cheesy charm, but in more recent times our mythological heroes have morphed into comic book heroes. Sure, we’ve had two Clash of the Titans (and one sequel), but finding movies about Greek gods these days is not easy.

Director Renny Harlin hopes to rectify that situation with the release of The Legend of Hercules starring the appropriately muscled Kellan Lutz. Harlin’s version of the story is basically like a superhero origin story. The film shows us Herc’s immaculate conception and birth, his rivalry with his older brother (they both love the same woman) and father (who is angry of his wife’s indiscretion … although he doesn’t learn until much later who the daddy really is), his stint as a gladiatorial slave who must fight his way back to Greece, and his subsequent battle to restore the kingdom and accept his destiny.

It all sounds terribly exciting and … well, it’s not, unfortunately. As we’ve grown accustomed to more gritty sword and sandal epics like 300, Immortals and TV’s Spartacus (and even the recent Clash of the Titans had a more realistic grit) that are filled with buckets of blood and nude or nearly nude bodies, The Legend of Hercules seems geared more to a family audience even with its relentlessly violent – yet oddly bloodless – battles. At one point early in the film, it seems like King Amphitryon decapitates a foe in battle, but it turns out he’s just removing the helmet with his sword. During a later hand-to-hand arena battle, Herc and Sotiris (Spartacus star Liam McIntyre) battle to the death against to opponents who apparently end up on spikes at the bottom of the arena. Except the editing cuts away from that violent end each time making one wonder if there is a longer R-rated version of the film coming to home video in a couple of months. For kids, it’s great but for adults it leaves you wanting more.

The cast are mostly unknowns to general audiences save for Lutz, who has a following from the Twilight series (and who also displayed his might in Immortals). He’s certainly got the body for the role and his acting is fine considering some of the dialog he has to deliver. Some of the other actors, notably anyone who is playing a villain, chew the scenery with mustache-twirling aplomb. The women are relegated to damsels in distress for the most part, although there is one female gladiator who is dispatched rather quickly. Probably the best performance comes from McIntyre who brings much more subtlety to the role of Sotiris. Most of the other male actors resort to 300-style shouting of their lines.

The production is a very mixed bag. The location and studio sets are fine, but the minute a green screen or some CGI is introduced, it becomes glaringly obvious, giving backgrounds the look of a painting rather than a real landscape or sky. Overhead shots of large armies at battle and crowds in coliseums are also a bit videogamey. The film is also presented in 3D and that, too, is a very mixed bag. I’ve never witnessed such disparity in a 3D film from shot to shot as I did with this one. It’s usually consistently good or just awful, but here you have some great effects (a spear flying out of the screen seemed to go right past my head and caused a woman in the audience behind me to shriek), and at other times the actors appear to be flat paper cutouts, or the entire image is wonky enough to cause some major eye strain. It was very bizarre, and I don’t know if this was native 3D or a conversion (an online source lists the film as native 3D, so the presentation issues are even more head-scratching).

I wasn’t expecting much from The Legend of Hercules, and it delivered on those expectations. I was at least hoping for some decent 3D and some good action, but the clichéd slo-mo shots and lack of even a dribble of blood made this Hercules a little less than legendary. It will be interesting to see which direction the Dwayne Johnson-starring version takes when it hits screens in July.