MOVIE REVIEW - Hercules

Here comes the second attempt to get us interested in the legendary Hercules. This one pulls out The Rock, and a bigger budget to make a larger splash than the flop a year or so ago.

This very tidy 90 minute movie shows the iconic Hercules as a half man, half God mercenary, being hired to fight wars for gold with his troupe of very loyal fellow fighters.  Our story takes place about 350 B.C., and the fight for control of Ancient Greece is on.  Hercules with his legendary strength and reputation is hired by one king in Greece in hopes of preserving his kingdom as he feels threatened by another. But is that the real truth? Or is Hercules being played?  That in a nutshell is our movie.

Pretty basic stuff.  That's about as deep as our story goes.  What this is, is countless, long and identical battle scenes.  Oh, there's some story, and some dialogue mixed in, but it's all fill till we start up another hand to hand battle with waring factions.  

The Rock runs around for 90 minutes in a skirt, and sometimes with shirt on, sometime not.  They try to develop characters, but it's all been seen before, and is predictable.  Oh yeah, there is a female hero as part of Hercules' gang.  She is young, long, beautiful and somehow performs amazing archery, and martial arts moves righting off hundreds of bloodthirsty warriors with almost no clothes on, without getting a scratch or dirty.  And she has a British or something close to it accent.

To it's credit, it's short, and to the point.  Could be as they were editing this together they realized there was really nothing to this, and they had nothing more to say, so let's go home. Good decision.   This does have a great musical soundtrack that I did enjoy most of the movie.  The fight scenes are violent, but not graphic for the most part.  Yes, there is tons of killing, but not much of it is horribly bloody or fatiguing.  It is available to you in regular screen, or 3D, that's the format I saw.  It was average at best, and probably not worth the up charge.

Hercules.  Big budget, but little to really show for it. Average at best.  And it would appear that there is little interest in this story, as this is the second attempt and each has fallen relatively flat.