amesmonde
In a besieged land, Beowulf, a stranger is drawn to the darkness and must battle against a creature named Grendel and his vengeance seeking mother. This is an odd mixed medieval, scifi and steam punk version of the 6th Century poem Beowulf. It has a pumping score and soundtrack with great visuals and plenty of over the top dialogue and action. Despite a made TV feel director Graham Baker offers leather, weapons, castles, dungeons and a practical rubber suit Grendel hidden behind some CGI reminiscent Predator mixed with Alien.With the prowess of Filmation's He-Man Christopher Lambert is Beowulf, sporting a Sting-like bleached hairdo. Corset squeezed Rhona Mitra is stunning as Kyra although given little to do. Model Layla Roberts shows up as the Grendel's mother and a succubus to effectively woo Oliver Cotton who plays Hrothgar. Former Bond bad guy Götz Otto also features and The Mummy's Patricia Velasquez briefly appear as Pendra. The cast wrestle with the script and for unexplained reasons the voices of the main cast have been re-dubbed (with their very own voices) which can be distracting as the timing of the loop is slightly off like an old kung fu film.Even though made prior to The Mummy Returns the CGI Scorpion King looking monster in the closing act isn't as convincing as Lambert's stunt double's Rutger Hauer looking hair and somersaults.It hasn't budget or the finesse of The 13th Warrior (1999) or Outlander (2008) and lacks the seriousness of Beowulf and the Grendel (2005) but it's far more fun than the lustre 2007 3D Beowulf version.Watch it if only for the costumes and Mitra.
dangermous
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.
Stewart Ash
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.
lastgoldrush
What. Uh...This movie is so dissociative and messed up that I literally lost a bit of my sanity after it was over. I will never be the same person again. I'm trying to put my finger on what, exactly, is so completely insane about it... It's not just the hilarious techno music, or the "outside of time" medieval/Blade Runner/wild west/Highlander setting, or the weird CGI "Grendel" monster that looks like a man made out of animated sausages, or even the "Grendel's mother" monster, which looks like some Alabama table-dancer who grew claws and tentacles when she stayed in the tanning bed too long. All of those things are weird, but what's really the strangest thing in this movie is the acting. I simply can't explain. This script is obviously, hellishly silly, but the actors exude deadly seriousness through it all. Lambert is always weird, and usually kind of boring, but for this one he's gone into Dolph Lundgrin territory: I can't help but just start laughing every time he talks.I will give this movie some credit for being completely scatter-brained and crazy as opposed to conservative and boring. I'll always take a bizarre disaster of a film over an utterly mediocre one.Warning: if you are planning on watching Christopher Lambert as Beowulf, be prepared to spend several hours thereafter wandering the streets in some kind of nightmarish, hyperactive-catatonic daze. It's true. When I was done with my Beowulf spirit journey, I woke up in the middle of the Siberian tundra in a puddle of blood and milk. There was a dead wolf lying next to me, and I later found I had a handful of human teeth in my shirt pocket. My VHS copy of Beowulf was sitting on a hastily-constructed stone altar nearby, enshrined with candles and wilted flowers. The tape told me to walk. I rose and I walked.
AD
