Review: ‘Hercules’

Well if “Hercules” gets anything right, it is having the one and only Dwayne Johnson playing the role, as he has the physicality and imposing stature required to be a conceivable half-human, half-god bad ass warrior mountain of a man, and thanks to that innate physical capability he possesses coupled with his unending charisma, “Hercules” mostly works as an entertaining piece of fantasy action. If there is anything wrong with this movie, Dwayne Johnson is not among them. And I am not just saying that because I fear this large man will read this and might possibly squish me into nothingness.

Because yes, there are some things wrong with “Hercules,” and we might as well start with the marketing versus what we go, as the movie was sold as a big fantasy movie involving Hercules battling all sorts of beasts and monsters, but the movie features all of these encounters during the opening of the movie, and in actuality, we don’t get any action involving any beasts, there is actually very little that is fantastical about this movie, it is all a great big trick, and we have all been had. This is not Dwayne Johnson as the son of Zeus battling great beasts, but instead Dwayne Johnson as a guy who is just a mercenary and who leads a small group of random people from job to job. And that is kind of lame.

Apparently this movie is somehow about reputation and building a legend that the people can get behind, an idea that they can rally together for and work together for, or some bullshit like that. See, I thought this was going to be about Hercules doing awesome feats that only a half-god could do, but really it is a movie about how Hercules makes it appear as if he is doing awesome things but really he is just being occasionally clever and is often aided by his merry band of murderers doing their own killing from the shadows. What would have been wrong about giving us a more traditional Hercules story instead of taking out all the things that make his stories cool in the first place and instead show us “the truth behind the legend?” Was anyone really clamoring for a fantasy movie in which all the interesting elements are excised, leaving just more scenes of men on horses attacking men with shields in a big ole field?

Really? Another damn open field battle? Ugh.

Oh yea and this movie’s got jokes! There are a lot of jokes, which then feels a little weird when we then have to deal with scenes featuring Hercules being haunted by the corpses of his dead wife and kids. Good times. Is this a jokey family movie? Or is it a bloody action movie? Apparently it tried to be both. Eh, they really didn’t find a proper balance between the two, so the darker stuff came across as pretty jarring.

The movie is not unwatchable by any means, but it really isn’t very memorable either. It is merely passable entertainment, something to take up time and distract you for a minute, and when it is all said and done, it just gets out of the way and let’s you get back to your life without any undue encumbrances. It just exists, it doesn’t try very hard, and as such doesn’t really offend, unless you find the idea of an unimaginative Hercules movie offensive, in which case, someone needs to reevaluate their priorities in the grand scheme of things, know what I mean?