Beowulf was a movie I heard about a few years or so back in an issue of Fangoria and at the time I was in high school and having just read the poem I got excited about it and then I didn't hear about again for a year or so except that Dimension picked it up and now that it's finally out Here's what I think about it. I for one thing am a Christopher Lambert fan...yes his acting at times is stiff but I enjoy his films, so I purchased the dvd of Beowulf and after work rushed home to watch it. The bad thing about the dvd is that I like watching the trailers to sike me up about the movie and from what I could tell the trailer kicked ass but the transfer was blurry and jumpy (hey Dimension when will u EVER pack a dvd with COOL extras...other than those on the Scream movies), so I went ahead and watched the movie so here goes. It differs from the poem for one by being in a kind of Mad Max/Conan future and Beowulf himself is a sad tragic hero instead of the hero's hero he is in the poem and it changes names of characters and adds romance (if u want to call it that) to the plot but with that I'll stop with the comparisons of the two and just review the movie. Beowulf is from the same producer of Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 and you can tell because it has tons of Kung-fu like action and the same kind of score as they do which is fine but most of the acting is very cheesy, which goes to not only the actors but the writers for coming up with the dialogue. I however play video games and listen to techno so all that didn't bother me (I would probably love the movie if it had Orgy and Deadsy on it's soundtrack). What did bother me was Grendal and his mother, Grendal is a predator knock off but I couldn't tell if the monster was crummy looking or not because of the HORRIBLE cgi that surrounds him at all times except at the end when he's killed and from that he looked o.k. Grendal's mother (who brought to mind Sil from Species) was o.k. looking when she was her monster form but the actress, while she was very attractive don't get me wrong, just didn't seem right, it wasn't the bad acting and chessy lines or even the repeated face licking, and the character was supposed to be seductive but the actress reminded me too much of a stripper rather than the evil villain she was supposed to be. But still for a low budget movie the movie was sleek looking and had nice production values and costumes...not to mention kick-ass weapons. I don't know if it was just poor writing or Dimension's notorious re-editing of movies but some things were never fully explained, I mean sure the barbaric guys were killing people from the castle because they thought they were damned but after they see Grendal's arm they say o.k. thats it lets pack up and leave and thats it....come on they could have done better than that. I know it seems I hate this movie from this review but NO I DON'T, it moves along fast enough and this is my fave character Christopher Lambert has played other than Connor Mcleod, so it does entertain and has good action (too many back flips though) which makes it one of those cool, cheesy movies that everyone has at least one of in their collection.
