Random DVD Round-Up 2 - CLASH OF THE TITANS

I would imagine that you have to try pretty hard to take material that is literally mythic, and a stellar cast, and produce a movie as plodding, hokey and unconvincing as CLASH OF THE TITANS. Director Louis Leterrier (THE INCREDIBLE HULK, THE TRANSPORTER) delivers a flick in which the CGI looks shittier than Harryhausen stop-motion and every single actor looks as automated as the Kraken. Leterrier has supermodels cast as Greek godesses and the not unattractive Mads Mikkelsen swinging a sword. He has Liam Neeson cast as Zeus; Ralph Fiennes cast as Hades and throws bit parts away on actors with the heft of Pete Postlethwaite. Most of all, he has a story filled with characters that have captivated audiences since thousands of years before Christ was born. And with all this, he creates a quivering mess. Shame, shame, shame.

This is, I suspect, what happens when you have a big budget, big actors and a lot of CGI. There's a sort of spreadsheet calculation that the movie simply can't fail. And yet, and yet, where is the directorial vision to cut through the large cast of characters and shape the underlying story? Where is the unique style of an epic like 300? Where is the producer to pull up the director and tell him that the eighty foot scorpion-Kraken is laughable?

Long story short, this movie sucks. But for the sake of form (and I can't believe I'm doing this because didn't we all learn this in school?) here's the plot summary. Zeus, chief God on Mount Olympus is pissed off because the people of Argos have become so arrogant that they refuse to worship him. In a fit of pique he allows his brother Hades to terrify the Argosians by unleashing a big beastie called the Krakan. Hades tells Zeus that this will cause the men to love him again and beg for his help; really Hades just wants to cause panic and seize power himself. So, back in Argos, the King's daughter Andromeda is to be sacrificed to the Kraken unless the demi-god Perseus (Sam Worthington - Aussie accent comical) can kill the Kraken first. He does this by cutting off the snake-addled head of Medusa (Natalia Vodianova) and using it is as a weapon. All this while Perseus has to come to terms with the fact that daddy was a god who forced himself upon mummy and then had his family killed. Perseus defeats the Kraken with the help of some buff Argossians (Mads Mikkelsen) and a hot chick who doesn't age (Gemma Arterton). And in an ending that defies legend with typical Hollywood producer arrogance, Perseus and Io have a nice romantic ending despite the fact she is pace legend basically his great grand-mother to the power of n.

Additional tags: Alexa Davalos, Elizabeth McGovern, Luke Treadaway, Travis Beacham, Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi, Beverley Cross, Agyness Deyn, Natalia Vodianova, Ramin Djawadi, Peter Mezies Jr

CLASH OF THE TITANS was released in April 2010 and is available on DVD and on iTunes.

London Film Fest Day 11 - VALHALLA RISING

VALHALLA RISING is my biggest disappointment of the festival to date. I *LOVE* the movies of Nicholas Windig Refn. The PUSHER trilogy - a tragicomic tale of the underclass, starring Mads Mikkelsen - was superb. Absurd, violent, funny, poignant, all at the same time. And as for NWR's BRONSON, starring Tom Hardy - that's one of the most powerful films I've seen this year: visually and narratively bold choices coupled with a strong central performance.

VALHALLA RISING does, at least, have some of this visual boldness. NWR shoots the movie like a graphic novel along the lines of 300. It's all gory, bloody, tattooed medieval warriors set against monochromatic landscapes. You can easily spend the first half hour of the flick just admiring Mads Mikkelsen's profile and the insanity of the violence. The problem is that this movie has nothing else to offer. Mikkelsen's norse soldier never speaks, never explains his actions and does not develop as a character. He just stands there, hating his Scotch captors, and occasionally flashing back to a hellish vision of murder. The captors don't do much either. They stand around looking grim. They get in a boat to fight the Crusades. We don't see anything but them sitting in the boat, enveloped in fog, and feeling desperate. They land in what turns out to be America and again we cut to some more wandering around in fields looking grim.

I mean, seriously, WTF? If you want to present an epic of heathen man versus nasty Christians, then that's what you've got to do. And if you want a highly stylised, austere character study (like BRONSON) you need to give the audience something to hold on to. Without these things, VALHALLA RISING just plays like a series of moody stills, and that's about as boring as traffic.

VALHALLA RISING played Venice and Toronto 2009. It will be released in Finland on January 29th and in Denmark on March 5th.