DVD Review: Immortals

DVD Reviews, Film, Reviews

After watching Immortals I was so frustrated that I had to wait a few days before attempting to write this review from a professional state of mind.

The story feels like screenwriters Charley and Vlas Parlapanides skimmed through some Greek Mythology Cliff’s Notes, picked out the parts they liked, made up some stuff that never happened and cobbled together this script that director Tarsem Singh felt was a good idea to helm.

In the film, King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) wants to unleash the Titans that the Gods have imprisoned. The only way to do this is with the Epirus Bow, which reminded me of the bow from the video game Kid Icarus. Meanwhile, Theseus (Henry Cavill) is a young peasant who has been mentored by an old man (John Hurt) who is really Zeus (Luke Evans) in disguise. The prophet Phaedra (Freida Pinto) has a vision that Theseus is the one who will defeat King Hyperion so along with a thief sidekick (Stephen Dorff) the small group hed out to find the Epirus Bow before Hyperion can and adventures ensue. Theseus fights the famed Minotaur (though it’s a guy in a bull shaped mask, not an actual Minotaur), kills a bunch of dudes, inadvertently hands the Epirus bow over to Hyperion and must join forces with the Gods to defeat Hyperion and the Titans.

If you know anything about Greek mythology there are SO MANY things wrong with this film. It hurts my brain to even process them. In fact, here is a link to a web site that has already spelled it out so I can focus on my review of the film.

Singh’s first film was The Cell another film that was very pretty to look at but had plot holes the size of Matza balls in it. Singh continues his focus on pretty things while all but forgetting about things like plot and story line. Often in the film, characters talk about needing to be some place then seconds later show up there with little time seeming to have passed. During the final battle they are in a giant wall that is well over a hundred stories tall and characters seems to be able to climb to the top in less than a minute. There is little to no motivation for any of the characters in this film. Why is Hyperion trying to unleash the Titans? Who knows? Who cares? It’s just what is character needs to do. And within all that Rourke still manages to squeeze our a pretty impressive performance, though he does utter “Christ” in a moment of frustration, who wasn’t even a gleam in his father’s eye when this story takes place.

Immortals certainly has its pretty points – some great costumes, for instance – but there are also some really ugly ones. Hyperion’s war helmet looks like a giant lobster claw and is really stupid and the outfits of the Gods are laughably stupid.

There are few okay action scenes, but thing to really get you exited or to pull you out of the funk of the rest of the film. If you’re like me you’ll pretty much spend most of the film just asking “Why?” over and over again and never getting an answer.

The film is presented in 1.85:1 widescreen and 5.1 Dolby Digital surround. If nothing else this is a really good looking film. However at times the film is very, very dark and if you’re not watching it with all the lights out some scenes will be so dark you can hardly see what’s happening on screen. There was one amusing moment when the score seemed to totally rip off Inception.

The DVD only includes two special features. It’s No Myth: (5 min.) Wherein the filmmakers and some “experts” try to justify how inaccurate Immortals is. Deleted Scenes: (8 min.) Nothing interesting to see here, move along.

The Cell was one of the fist films I ever reviewed theatrical way back in the day when I wrote for my college newspaper. I HATED that movie and tore it apart in my review. I missed Singh’s second film The Fall (but I hear it’s actually pretty good). However, with Immortals Singh delivers more of the same: pretty pictures that aren’t even worth a 1000-word review.

20th Century Fox presents Immortals. Written by: Charley and Vlas Parlapanides. Directed by: Tarsem Singh. Starring: Henry Cavill, Mickey Rourke, Freida Pinto, Stephen Dorff, Luke Evans and John Hurt. Running time: 110 minutes. Rating: R for sequences of strong, bloody violence and a scene of sexuality. Released on DVD: March, 3 2012. Available at Amazon.com.

Mike Noyes received his Masters Degree in Film from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. A few of his short films can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/user/mikebnoyes. He recently published his first novel which you can buy here: https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Days-Years-Mike-Noyes-ebook/dp/B07D48NT6B/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528774538&sr=8-1&keywords=seven+days+seven+years