One thing's for sure: never have the Dark Ages looked so chic. "Beowulf" was filmed two years ago, but has since been labored over by a team of digital animators who have given every frame of the movie a computer generated imagery-facelift. The result resembles an eerily realistic video game, in which the actors play digital avatars of themselves. As the titular Scandinavian warrior, Ray Winstone looks about 50 pounds lighter than usual; Angelina Jolie, meanwhile, has been transformed into a buck-naked she-demon, whose sensitive areas are concealed by strategically placed slime.
Jolie plays the mother of Grendel (Crispin Glover), a ghoulish abomination who lives in the mountains and travels down every so often to gnaw the heads off unsuspecting Danes. This vexes King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins), who promises half his kingdom's gold to anyone capable of slaying the beast. Enter Beowulf (Winstone), who storms into Hrothgar's hall dressed like a barbarian underwear model and bellows, "I am Beowulf, and I'm here to kill your monster!" Talk about good first impressions.
First seen posing iconically at the prow of a ship, Beowulf is a singular breed of heroic beefcake, the kind of guy that probably arm wrestles Russell Crowe in his spare time. Beowulf makes short work of Grendel, then spends the rest of the movie squaring off against sea monsters, dragons, Angelina Jolie and more. The film keeps up this brisk pace, and for good reason; every time it slows down, we begin to notice the absurdity of the visual conceit. Zemeckis's digital paint job gives the actors' bodies an attractively glossy veneer, but their facial expressions seem strangely flattened, their eyes rendered glassy and blank. The effect is aesthetically intriguing but dramatically inert; at worst, the characters resemble soulless action figures, going through the motions of human behavior to pass the time between action scenes.
But man, those are some action scenes. Zemeckis and his animators have not yet learned how to breathe life into their digital humanoids, but they sure know how to put on a good show in the meantime. Freed from the constraints of visual reality, the movie becomes a hyperkinetic thrill ride of breakneck intensity. Unlike the turgid "300" -- a similar film that functioned more as a smug display of its own questionable skill -- "Beowulf" has the visual chops to justify its self-indulgent mayhem; Zemeckis is a whiz with a camera, darting in and out between the action with such vigor that at times I wanted to duck for cover.
One of the film's many pleasures is the opportunity to watch a talented cast play unashamedly to their own star personae. Here is Anthony Hopkins as a wise old lecher, Angelina Jolie as a sinister sexpot (with wings!) and John Malkovich as the vaguely effeminate bad guy. Accents run the gamut from British to Danish to American, but since the real characters would have spoken Old English anyway, it seems hardly fair to quibble. As Beowulf, Ray Winstone growls the whole performance from beneath his CGI makeover. You can understand why he took the role; there's not much character development to speak of, but when else do you get asked to lasso a dragon?
Ironically, the movie's most compelling presence is not its title character but his nemesis Grendel, played by Crispin Glover with shades of Frankensteinian pathos. Visualized by the art department as a fleshy, scaly bundle of nervous psychoses, Grendel is a creature straight out of Tim Burton's worst nightmare. Many of the monster's organs are located outside his skin, which may explain why he's so cranky all the time. We also learn that Grendel is Hrothgar's son, which adds an interesting Oedipal spin to the proceedings. I kept hoping that Grendel's mother would sue Hrothgar for child support, but I guess demon queens didn't really do that back in the Dark Ages. Still, it would have made a hell of a Judge Judy episode.
Paternal scandals aside, "Beowulf" is an enjoyable bit of Hollywood nonsense, bolstered by a dazzling display of technological wizardry. If you can, seek out the IMAX version showing in select theatres across the country; the film mostly consists of sharp objects being hurled directly at the camera, the full impact of which can only be experienced in 3-D. Whatever format you choose, I implore you to approach "Beowulf" with a sense of humor and a tolerance for the borderline ridiculous. How else to appreciate invaluable one-liners like "My mighty lust limb can transport you to ecstasy and back"?
