Change Your Image
watrician
Reviews
Beowulf & Grendel (2005)
Stunning locations, disappointing production.
The Icelandic location shots in this film were enough to keep me glued to the screen, but aside from Butler and Skarsgard, the acting is wooden, the screenplay limp, and the plot puzzlingly flat.
When the acting is this stilted, one can usually blame the director for not getting the actors engaged. Sara Polley is certainly more capable than this role demonstrates. But here, the screenplay is partly to blame. Where Hrothgar's queen was meant to inject a sense of the Viking power and pride, she comes off as a haughty shrew. Where Selma could have been savvy, sexy, and sharp-tongued (think Stanwyck), she is nothing more than an unlikely, smirking, bearer of the storyline.
And aren't those Scandinavian accents jarringly Irish? How the plot could go this far into the deep-freeze is a mystery. The epic poem, far from being a relic of history, is the first record of one of mankind's most inbred myths. Hollywood has almost always missed the nuance of timeless stories, and this Canadian stab at emulating Hollywood follows suit. There are reasons the Beowulf saga has resonated through the centuries, this film doesn't capture any of them.
Silver Canyon (1951)
Pleasing '50's Hollywood Western
"Silver Canyon" is a dandy example of the Saturday matinée features Hollywood cranked out after World War II. Autry, as himself, takes on the bad guys with cool courtesy and a ready song. There's the plucky girl, the comical sidekick, the climactic shoot-out, and the Lee Van Cleef of his time, Bob Steele, lurking evilly behind the rocks. The cowboy hero archetype, taken from 19th century dime novels, played well to post-war America, and has become the equivalent of the Japanese samurai or the European knight for us. There's no confusion here... right is right and wrong is wrong.
This type of 70 minute second feature translated easily to the small TV screen so the '50's and '60's saw a profusion of derivative hour and half-hour westerns, such as "Rawhide", "Have Gun Will Travel", and "Gunsmoke". One of those featured "Silver Canyon"'s Gail Davis in 80 episodes of "Annie Oakley". Many boomers will also recognize the cast's Jim Davis from "Rescue 8" or "Dallas", and the inimitable Pat Buttram from "Green Acres".
The formula westerns of the era, and "Silver Canyon" in particular may not be the stuff of critic's dreams, (and Gene Autry singing jailhouse blues may not be the most evocative) but they constitute an unpretentious view of the world as we wanted it to be after decades of Depression and war.