Film review: Immortals

If there is one thing Hollywood is particularly adept at, it’s proving the old adage that throwing money at a good idea does not guarantee a great outcome.

Case in point: Tarsem Singh’s Immortals, a film that revels so much in its own hopelessly misguided delusions of grandeur that it almost entirely forgets to entertain the audience.

As pretentious as it is dumb, Immortals is thoroughly charmless.

And it hurts because Greek mythology should be a no-brainer. Heroic tales of derring-do, man pitched against god, swords and sorcery. It writes itself. In fact, it has written itself. With such an abundance of material, in a universe without comics, a legion of film fans could as easily be frothing over the Perseus reboot and filling forums with posts about what a bold piece of casting Carey Mulligan is as Medusa as they have with the need to re-tell Spider-Man’s origin and hire James McAvoy as Professor X.

The story here pitches a newly-orphaned Theseus (nu-Superman Henry Cavill, who certainly looks like an inspired choice for Kal-El on the evidence presented here) against the maniacal King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke, dipped in tan, slurring his way through his dialogue recalling the hapless Exit in Red) who is on a quest to find a powerful bow, whose arrow is capable of freeing his Titan brethren from their prison so that they may rise up against the Olympian gods that have imprisoned them. Theseus is joined on his adventure by a rebellious slave played by Stephen Dorff (going through the motions but probably glad of the gig) and Slumdog Millionaire’s Frieda Pinto, as a soothsaying psychic who can see glimpses of the future (and with whom Theseus has little to no chemistry outside a wistful glance).

Billed as coming from the creators of 300, Singh clearly wants to paint in renaissance colours but instead washes the frame with a hideous muddy palette that dulls every inch of the film. Singh is a filmmaker with a uniquely idiosyncratic vision and to his credit, there are a few glimpses of a weird and wonderful take on Greek legend desperate to get out but ultimately it is all for naught. Backdrops and sets are bland and uninspiring, costumes look like they’ve just that second come back from the spray paint workshop (you will probably never see such an uninspiring collection of gods again) and everyone puts on their best po-face expression to deliver a script of such lumbering beefcake stupidity that the film threatens to collapse in on itself under the weight of such earnest tripe.

Immortals tries to make amends with the odd set piece: an oily tidal wave is a particular stand-out and there’s some unintentional light relief with a torture scene perpetuated by a henchman wearing a bull mask but the film saves its best for last, in the inevitable climactic confrontation that all plot points head towards. After a cut-price version of every rousing pre-battle speech you’ve ever heard, Theseus leads his men to war and Tarsem goes for broke, sloshing sets with litres of CGI blood and plenty of gore (almost certainly spawning an Extended Zeus’ Lightning Unrated Edition on DVD that will garner five stars and a poster quote from Nuts).

The Olympian gods occasionally make an appearance, all looking somewhat embarrassed to be there (though Isabel Lucas is a gorgeous Athena despite the best efforts of her costume to convince otherwise) before some extremely judicious editing robs the finale of any proper closure. There’s a little coda to the story to give John Hurt something else to do other than exhibit a mischievous pay-the-rent blockbuster glint in his eye but basically it’s as if someone forgot to film an ending.

And a word on the 3D. This is yet another expensive ticket you can easily avoid; the effect barely registers. Oh, for this to be the nail in the coffin of such an underwhelming development in cinema. James Cameron has got to be laughing all the way to Avatar 2 as everyone else fails feverishly to use the technology effectively before he rides in and shows everyone how it’s done.

It’s said that it’s much easier to criticise a film than to praise it but such leaden, clumsy filmmaking deserves to be appraised in such a fashion when the end product is so creatively misguided. As pretentious as it is dumb, Immortals is thoroughly charmless.

“Witness Hell” declares Hyperion, plucking another cliché from the Epic Battle copybook. By the time the film has ended, you will have.