Movie Review: Hercules Reborn

Hercules Reborn 

Starring: John Morrison (aka John Hennigan), Christian Oliver, Marcus Shirock, James Duval, Dylan Vox, Christina Ulfsparre, Alistair A. Duff, Foued Mansour, Jeremy M. Inman, Jennifer Marie Paul, Ben Chagra Khalid, Aurelie Armelle Simone Chatellier, Rim Touassi, Yassine Amer, Youness Lahlafi, Youssef Marchouki, Aziz Janah, Samir Oualid 

Director: Nick Lyon 

The Asylum, USA, Morocco, 2014. 

Drugged Hercules (John Morrison) kills his wife Megara (Rim Touassi) and his kids. Devastated of realising what he has done, Hercules leaves the city of Enos. He is then rumored to go around doing heroic deeds and helping people (this background is somewhat faithful to the original Hercules myth). 

Princess Theodora and Arius

Horace

Greedy general Nikos (Dylan Vox) wants to conquer a village that has a gold mine, against King Demetrius' (Ben Chagra Khalid) will. Arius (Christian Oliver) and Horace (James Duval) are soldiers in king's army. Arius is about to marry Princess Theodora (Christina Ulfsparre) and Nikos gets jealous. Nikos plans a coup with his henchman Cyrus (Marcus Shirock). The princess is taken captive. Arius and Horace escape and getting rid of the evil tyrant is the task to do. They plan to get help from Hercules. However Hercules has become a drunken slob. Horace is skeptical about Hercules, but Arius believes in him. So first Hercules must be motivated to find his inner hero.

Cyrus and General Nikos

Hercules is a bit tired

By the Asylum standards, Hercules Reborn looks well made. This is clearly meant to be a serious actioner, and not a self-conscious genre parody. Luckily silly-looking CGI monsters are missing (although there are some clumsy-looking CGI-effects). The filming locations in Morocco look great, and cinematography looks good in many scenes. However due the budget limitations the city of Enos looks like it has about thirty residents. 

The heroes plan for the next move

Nice-looking cinematography

Action scenes are bloody and overall the tone is gritty and dark. Usually in movies Hercules is a jovial guy, John Hennigan puts some darkness and fierceness into the character. Hennigan also makes some nice WWE slams. I think he would do well in Conan-style sword-and-sandal movies. Christina Ulfsparre is tougher-than she-looks princess. Also Christian Oliver, Dylan Vox and James Duval do well in their roles. Hercules Reborn is one of the better Asylum movies. Acknowledge that this is a low-budget neo-peplum that manages to transcend many of its limitations, and you may be pleasantly surprised.

Dispatching the enemies WWE-style

Grittier than usual Hercules

Rating: Good (for a low budget action film)