Beowulf is a wanderer who learns about a man-eating creature called Grendel, which comes in the night to devour warriors trapped at the Outpost. The Outpost is ruled by Hrothgar. He has a daughter, whose husband may have been murdered by the Outpost's master of arms.
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Reviews
Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
I've given this a six purely for having the nerve to make such a film!! This film is OK to watch when you have a hangover and want to gawk at Rhona mitras cleavage that's about it.......I'm not going to write a review as such because its hard to write about something so ridiculous lol Instead I will list the following;-Black vikings wearing bifocals. smoking tobacco before tobacco was brought to Europe! bronze age vikings living in huge castles built of stone hahahaha. I laughed all the way through this film..... It's seems the director thought gay club music was appropriate for a "period" movie.......I especially liked Rhona mitra wearing lingerie!! This is the earliest film I've seen Rhona mitra in and my god she is hot. It was worth sitting through just to see her :-) I was particularly amorous towards my girlfriend after watching this, she wondered what got into me. Do not tell her it was Rhona Mitra please.......There's a lot of machined metal around for bronze age vikings....... WTF! a zipped up plastic bag to put the body into the furnace? I didn't know zips were invented back then hahaha. To top it all off was the loud speaker and PA system hahahah!!! I didn't realise they had night vision telescopes back then..... Apparently back flips and front flips are a sound sword fighting battle technique..... Overall the action scenes were laughable. The sword fighting was a joke. This film falls into the category of its so bad its good (well almost good) at the least it was entertaining.
An outpost is continually attacked at night by a beast known as Grendel. One day, Beowulf, a mysterious stranger, shows up and claims he will slay it. That's about it for the similarity to the original poem, by the way. This is set in a post-apocalyptic age, or a revisionist history version of the medieval times(I think the specific term is Steampunk). It is an awesome flick, pure B-movie goodness, and it isn't particularly aspiring to be anything more than that. If that isn't appealing to you, this wasn't made for you. On the production side, it has a nice look to it, with great lighting, distinct designs(those weapons are nifty! And not just the morphy ones that the titular hero produces a seemingly endless supply of... add to that the creature stuff) and genuine atmosphere(in spite of a kickass soundtrack consisting of a mix of rock and techno). It's well-paced and does not overstay its welcome(this is about 83 minutes before the credits... and on that note, guess what the opening titles of this is? Essentially those of Mortal Kombat of '95, they just swapped the text, the iconic background, and put lightning where there used to be fire). The action is great, if it can feel like it's cutting to a stunt double some(and man, is Lambert proud of his ability to do backflips... he does them as much as he possibly can in this), the choreography is well-done and it's exciting. This also gets genuine tension going, and is scary at points. The badassery is through the roof, especially with Christopher, but really, nearly all the males in this are testosterone-fueled stereotypes spouting ridiculous one-liners. The female lead is Rhona Mitra's cleavage, and one can clearly tell why her breasts were cast(I'm not kidding, she shows them every single time she faces the camera in this... in her sheer outfit, she wears the most clothes out of any of the women in this, which is "hardly any"). For the villain, we have a succubus portrayed by a Playmate who looks and behaves exactly like what her day job is(makes sense, no?). The practical FX are well-done, the CGI is reasonable for the time. For both, they don't rely on it excessively, rather they cut back and forth like before cinema could simply stay on a computer-generated visual, and with the anticipated effect - there is build-up to the monster. There is a bunch of strong, bloody, gory violence, disturbing content, nudity and direct sexuality. I recommend this to any fan of cool, dumb, fun entertainment. 7/10
This film is so bad it's brilliant! I've never laughed so much out loud at a film in my life. Not even when watching a comedy; which this isn't. Imagine the production quality of the "Evil Dead" films, and the acting from the TV series "Sunset Beach", add a dash of soft porn, and a sprinkle of visual effects done by some blind students, and you have a truly entertaining evening in. And hang on in there till the end when you might actually fall off your seat in shock. If you catch the DVD with the making of documentary. It's even more astonishing that they all truly felt that they were working on great movie. Monsieur Lambert at his cheesy best.
I really don't understand why people are bashing this movie. Hey, its no Citizen Kane (thank god) but I felt entertained pretty much all the way through with the possible exception of a few scenes. There were lots of action, the stunts, fighting, sets, and special effects were all done at a very high level. To me this was no B movie. The production and look of the film were first rate. Christopher Lambert probably isn't my first choice in leading men but he did his part well. The monsters looked cool and the babes were definitely juicy. I especially enjoyed the opening scenes when Beowulf rescued a girl from execution (with lots of nifty fighting) only to discover she had rather be dead than re-enter the fortress where Grendel was hanging out. Was the movie true to the poem...who cares? One of the best things about the film was the fact that it wasn't exactly like anything else out there. I can appreciate that. The cast wasn't the greatest but I still enjoyed myself. I you are reading this and you like fantasy, sword and sorcery, or even Tolkein type stuff I recommend this to you. Pay no attention to the low rating, all that tells me is that a lot of people seem to expect everything coming out of Hollywood to be art and that is the last thing Hollywood is about. It's about entertainment and thrills and Beowulf definitely delivers.