Locut0s

This is essentially Terry Gilliam's ode to 1984 and while many aspects of it DO work Gilliam can't seem to let go of Monty Python long enough to make this the film it should have been. On the one hand we have a seriously strange and very successful dystopian, steampunkish 1984. On the other we have what feels like a 2 hour Monty Python skit. The two styles just don't play well together. What you end up with isn't a film that's 'strange good' but strange in its basic cinematic qualities. Everything from the set design, screen play, to dialogue is just too schizophrenic. One moment it's a dark and, I must say successful, take on a fictionary 'comunofacist' world, the next it's prat falls and over the top accents. You go the Ministry of Information to John Cleese's Ministry of Silly Walks. Even the characters can't seem to decide which side of the fence they are on with Jonathan Pryce's Sam Lowry switching from 1984s confused and scared to goofy and childish so fast it makes your head spin. If Gilliam could just have toned down the Python here we would have had the masterpiece so many claim the film to be.

Think 300 crossed with The Matrix and you get the idea. Cool visuals, and the art direction is quite good in places, but 300 was more consistent in this respect. Some of the costume work seems particularly sloppy here. The power the gods possessed was quite satisfyingly viscerally represented. Your typical slow mo kung fu bloodshed but better executed than in a lot of such films. Instead of a sword ballet they manage to convey a sense of awesome power better than you might expect. Sadly where any film really counts, characters, script, dialogue, plot, Immortals falls flat, sometimes laughably so. Theseus and his companions are mostly flat forgettable characters, and saddled with some horrible dialogue to boot. Mickey Rourke as Hyperion does a better job but that's not saying a lot. And I know his voice is naturally hoarse but by god if I see another film where he plays it up like he has throat cancer I'm going to walk out. Freida Pinto is suitably hot but is little more than eye candy. You have you typical scenes of armies thousands strong running across the desert, throngs of extras thwacking each other with cardboard swords, and yes a "rousing" speech by our protagonist. If all you want to see is comic book Greek mythology it's okay, notice I didn't say good, but even in the genre of comic book art house flicks there are much better films (Sin City for example). If story, character, plot, and the like mean much to you, you won't find much here. Still as a pure popcorn muncher it could be worse.