The Legend of Hercules

First, it isn't "Hercules", but "Heracles", "grace of Hera". I don't know how come Anglo people have such a hard time with the immortal hero's original, Greek name. In here, about each time they pronounced his name, they underline the fact that it meant "Heracles, grace of Hera" but called him by his Roman name anyway. It added a superfluous layer of fake of the movie, IMO.

Moving on; The title is ironic anyway because the legend of Heracles gets severely mangled here: Oh, we've got the Nemean lion, but no mention of the snakes send after his crib, or the twelve labours, or any other chapter in the life of this godly hero plagued with many too human traits. No, what we've got here is a likable farm hand boy and a run-of-the-mill love triangle story so mundane that elaborating about it would be useless. He shows little strength of either will or muscle, being easily overpowered about half a dozen times in the movie.

The whole movie is sanitized to the point that there is no blood nor flesh nor any of these nasty things that takes place in the world we live in. To make this gruel more appealing, it was filmed à la Gladiator (from which it also takes its basic script) and 300, for the battle sequences and general photography (complete with an abuse of Matrix-like stop motion, for *every* move). There is action and romance all of the time, and yet indifference ensues. There's a fine line between cleanliness and insipidity.

The actors, rushed and lacking direction, vary from acceptable (Kenneth Cranham) to mediocre (pretty much everybody else). The sets, stunts and fights do look good, but lack originality. The soundtrack is, well, unnoticeable.

Short version: 3/10. Pretty much because I am outraged that Heracles, the basis for what we know today as the "super-heroes" culture, is being reduced here to a romantic teenage gladiator. On the other hand the movie is great if one has sleeping disorders - works every time for me.