Hercules was withheld from the press before its release, which is not generally a vote of confidence from a studio on the behalf of one of its films. But Paramount needn’t have worried so much about this, because it’s far from terrible. That, of course, is hardly a vote of confidence, but “not terrible” is far more than expected from the movie, based on its promotional materials.
Based on the comic book Hercules: The Thracian War by Steve Moore (who, according to Alan Moore, has been royally screwed over by the filmmakers in the process of adaptation), the movie picks up after the twelve labors of myth for which the Greek hero is known. Now, rather than a lone-wolf demigod, Hercules (Dwayne Johnson) is the leader of a mercenary team. His comrades are other figures from Greek myth, though all reduced to mere human beings. So is Hercules himself, in fact (as far as we can call Johnson, who physically resembles the exaggerated way comic book superheroes are drawn, a “mere human being”). Though the trailers made a big show of him fighting monsters, those scenes are confined to the first few minutes of the film, illustrating the stories told about Hercules, which turn out to be gross exaggerations of what really happened. The Hydra, for instance, was really a bunch of robbers wearing lizard masks. “Centaurs” turn out to be… guys on horseback.
It seems like the logical endpoint of our contemporary fondness for de-mystifying the mystical, though Troy remains and probably always will be the purest example. Hercules isn’t at all consistent with it’s faux-realism — while monsters are just stories, Hercules performs multiple undeniably superhuman feats of strength, and his companion Amphiaraus (a quite fun Ian McShane) is a seer who makes several accurate prophecies (along with a few that don’t pan out, to be fair). So is this The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance with togas or not? The movie is muddled. Nothing would be better than a straight adaptation of the Hercules myth. It’s ripe ground for cool cinema.
Hercules‘s saving grace is that it’s still a surprising amount of fun in spite of its need to poo-poo its protagonist’s glamour. The plot is simple, seeing Hercules’ band assist the city-state of Thrace in quelling a civil war. Johnson is a natural fit for the role, so easily does he exude heroic bravado. The man doesn’t just look like he could easily lift a boulder — he carries himself like a true-blue warrior ideal, the man whom you can equally buy snapping a neck or patting a child on the shoulder reassuringly. His band work well enough with the single defining characteristic each of them get: McShane is the glibly wise mentor, Rufus Sewell is the smarmy second-in-command, Reece Ritchie is the go-getter kid eager to prove himself, Askel Hennie is the silent psycho warrior, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal is the female. They bounce off each other well enough, and sell the rousing though disappointingly CGI-and-PG-13-hobbled battle scenes.
We still haven’t gotten the Hercules film we fully deserve, but this version is entertaining enough. It’s far more intentionally funny than its trailers let on, for one thing. Overall, the bait-and-switch the marketing campaign has pulled, promising a grim movie full of monster-fighting but delivering a fun movie that’s all about swords and sandals combat, worked out for the better.
