Movie Review: The Legend of Hercules

The Legend of Hercules 

Starring: Kellan Lutz, Gaia Weiss, Scott Adkins, Roxanne McKee, Liam Garrigan, Liam McIntyre, Rade Serbedzija, Johnathon Schaech, Luke Newberry, Kenneth Cranham, Mariah Gale, Sarai Givaty
Director: Renny Harlin 

Summit Entertainment, Millennium Films, USA, 2014. 

Ambitious King Amphitryon (Scott Adkins) goes around conquering the world. His wife, Queen Alcmene (Roxanne McKee) prays Goddess Hera for help to restore peace. The Queen has a son Iphicles (Liam Garrigan). Philosopher Chiron (Rade Serbedzija) teaches him about war theory. A priestess possessed by Hera (Mariah Gale) appears and announces that Alcmene will get a second son whose father is Zeus. Amphitryon names the baby Alcides, but his real name is Hercules.

Greek pike men

King Amphitryon

Queen Alcmene

20 years later Alcides/Hercules (Kellan Lutz) goes swimming with his girlfriend Princess Hebe (Gaia Weiss). Iphicles is jealous. Alcides then does his first heroic deed, killing the Nemean Lion but Iphicles takes the credit. The king announces the wedding of Hebe and Iphicles. Hebe runs away and the events lead that Alcides is banished to Egypt. Alcides and Sotiris (Liam McIntyre) travel to Egypt with a small group of soldiers. Alcides and Sotiris are captured and Alcides adopts his real name to hide his royal origin. Hercules and Sotiris must become gladiators before they can fight the evil king. 

Hercules

Princess Hebe

Iphicles

The movie tries to copy the visual style of 300, as King Amphitryon says in the film Imitation is the best form of flattery. The sets look mostly okay. The fight scenes look good, especially the gladiator fight on top of stone pillars and the final fight. However the plot holes are obvious and dialogue is often badly written. Also the movie's battles are disappointingly bloodless because of the low PG-13 rating. Sure the plot is predictable, and the movie takes some time to arrive the action sequences. Also the allies Hercules are poorly introduced. There were some legendary heroes such as Agamemnon (Luke Newberry) and Creon (not appearing in the final film, Jukka Hilden of the Dudesons) whose plotlines were cut from the final film (http://www.cinemareview.com/production.asp?prodid=17089 and http://www.iltasanomat.fi/viihde/art-1288640118474.html the latter link is in Finnish only). 

Sotiris and Hercules

One of the opponents is Humbaba (Spencer Wilding)

The gladiator match on stone pillars looks good

However the movie does some tribute to the 50s and 60s peplum movies. It contains all things that you would expect to see in a traditional peplum, muscular men, couple of pretty ladies, an evil king, trusty sidekick, sailing the Mediterranean, loose take on Greek mythology, gladiator battles and some variable quality special effects. There is also the obligatory scene where Hercules must break steel chains after being captured. 

Hercules unchained

Certainly this is not the worst Hercules movie ever made as some of the IMDB trolls would like us to believe. Kellan Lutz is fairly standard muscleman but Scott Adkins makes a good villain role. Despite the movie's flaws and some weird production decisions it is fairly entertaining take on the peplum genre. Oh, and the director Renny Harlin makes a brief cameo appearance.

Renny Harlin and Liam Garrigan

Rating: Average