Circa: 1999
Runtime: 95 mins
I have to say, I'm usually not a huge fan of "Straight to Video" New Releases. I saw a preview for this one tho when I rented "Shanghai Noon" It looked really cool, and for some stupid reason, I'm drawn to Christopher Lambert movies. From well known movies like "Highlander" to lesser known gems such as "knight moves" I've always liked his tough ass characters. He just has a cool style to him. No matter what the role, he's always a tough ass. It's great *smiles*
This movie is based slightly on the 5th century poem that it's named after. When I say slightly... I MEAN slightly.. Some names and a tidbit of the storyline is all the likenesses we see.
The story takes place in what I assume is a post apocolyptic medieval like world, where sword and machines mix. I know it's been done before, in movies like "cyborg" and "knights", but I have to admit the way they did it here is both original, and rather cool. The way they pulled this off was by making almost every aspect of the film seem like you are watching an
"Anime" (Japanese Animation for you Lhamas out there) movie. Everything from the swords to the fight scenes, to the way the armor looked on the knights was very "anime" like.
Beowulf played by Lambert, is hunting what we find out later, is the "grendal" a beast born of pure evil *yadda yadda* We have one of two things going on in this movie. Either Lambert's awkward acting scenes,which are kind of funny to watch. Or him doing ten backflips and kickin the shit out of people.. And that he does, with mass quantities of style. He carries some awesome weapons in his arsenal. A pair of two shot crossbows, a flip up sword thing that breaks apart into about four other weapons, and a totally kick ass knife that shoots a spining mini buzz-saw thingy.
That is really basically the story.We see a castle of people die in fairly tame and often "off camera" ways. We find out where grendal is from. We get to meet his mommie, and when we do, it's quite a nice piece of eye-candy. The CG used in the transformation scene was really nice for a straight to video release. And Grendal's Mother's final form is breathtaking.
But like all movies in this class, there is definate things that hold it back. Remeber when I said it's very "anime" like? Well one drawback of anime is "reusing scenes" It's a rather annoying thing that cheap anime (Usually Hentai[adult] films) use to save money. This movie does the same thing a few times. We see the grendal jump three times EXACTLY the same way same background, everything. Believe me, it's noticable. Another this was the "sex" scene. We see the exact same heavy petting scene twice. This could be excused by the fact that it was a dream, seemed like an excuse to fill ten minutes to me.
One last thing, the soundtrack... This movie has an awesome tracklist to it! It has medieval sound mixed with pulse thumping techno music. Very nice.
Overall, it's a good rent. It's one of the kind of movies that I would be disappointed if I saw it in the theatre, but on video it was really cool. Check it out.
Lupin-III
We see two gouges, and don't see over thirty deaths.. We just hear screams etc..
Funny Things I Noticed
Not much except the fact that in the scene after the "heavy petting" scene the king picks up his long ass sword and it bends. Then while he's walking, we see him holding it by the blade to support it. ( ^__^ )
One last thing, the actual tramsformation of Grendal's Mom, was awesome... but the death of grendal's mom looked like a bad Playstation CG intro.