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The Immortals (2011) Film Review

'The Immortals' was directed by Tarsem Singh, a relatively new in his own right director and probably most recently known as second unit director on "The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button"."The Immortals" comes with a very experienced and capable cast - John Hurt, Mickey Rourke and Stephen Dorf (as Theseus ultimately loyal side kick) all put in fine efforts with the script they have to work with. Henry Cavill is best known for his role in the TV series "The Tudors" and plays the lead character -Theseus. In short, Theseus (Henry Cavill) is a mortal man chosen by the God Zeus to lead the fight against the ruthless King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke), who is on a rampage with his army across Greece to obtain a weapon that can destroy humanity. The film was produced by the guys who did 300 so expect to see lots of blood and guts and of course CGI fight scenes.

 

Upon writing this film review i came to the conclusion that this film is not for the faint hearted, on a number of of occasions i found myself closing my eyes.The film has been shot in FULL as a 3D production and without doubt it looks great up on the big screen.In fact this is the big draw card to see the film but I feel the quality of the script was sacrificed because of this and the majority of the budget seems to have gone into the special effects.Consequently for the release on non-3D format either in the cinemas or at the home DVD market it might fall flat because of the focus here. In a number of cases I felt some of the lines were a bit corny to the extent where you could see a spoof could easily be made of this film and do well on DVD. Certainly having the Greek Gods involved and the way the scenes were filmed where they fly down to earth made me think of "It’s a bird, no it’s a plane, its….. a god!! Their costumes were very camp and I think they would have been better to be left out of the picture altogether as actual identities. Henry Cavill (Theseus) will next be seen as Superman in the latest telling of the story titled "Man Of Steel".

The key female lead - Phaedra, is played by Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire & Rise Of the Planet Of The Apes) but without much passion so I thought particularly in a key love scene. In conclusion I am sure the female viewers will enjoy the scenery and we males will feel quite ordinary. I think it will draw crowds to the cinemas and will rent well on DVD but from a film review critique point of view it doesn't stack up to other sword and sandal epics such as Troy & Gladiator.