PLOT IN A NUTSHELL: When the evil barbarian king Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) starts scouring the land for a special bow that will allow him to release the Titans, the predecessors and arch enemies of the Pantheon of Greek Gods led by Zeus (Luke Evans), and killing anyone unlucky enough to get in his way, it falls on the young hero Theseus (former Tudors star Henry Cavill, the Brit who would be Superman) and his ragtag group of mismatched heroes to stop him.
Very much a style over substance type film, "Immortals" is very much in the vein of "300", albeit with more clothes, so much so that some of the fight choreography looks like it was taken from that earlier sword and sandal epic. Stephen McHattie even appears in both films. Like the 2007 film based on Frank Miller's graphic novel "re-imagining" of the infamous battle between 300 Spartans and the Persians, "Immortals" is at its best when serving up a smörgåsbord of off the wall visuals and epic action.
As Theseus, the man who would defeat the Minotaur, Henry Cavill brings a heroic nobility to the part that the film probably doesn't deserve - which makes it a shame that he doesn't have a stronger villain to play off of. With his bloated beer belly and gravelly monotone mumbling, Mickey Rourke comes across as a painfully bland villain, failing to bring the kind of fire to the part that an old school actor such as the late Stephen Boyd no doubt would have brought. Even when he lights a helpless priest on fire or orders that the weak, effeminate coward Lysander (Joseph Morgan) be castrated by having his manhood smashed beyond repair with a really big sledgehammer as punishment for betraying his own people, Rourke never sets off the kind of sparks you would expect a larger than life villain to have.
Among the films visual assets, Frieda Pinto and Isabel Lucas make the most of their roles as Theseus's seer lover and the daughter of Zeus.
Very much a style over substance type film, "Immortals" is very much in the vein of "300", albeit with more clothes, so much so that some of the fight choreography looks like it was taken from that earlier sword and sandal epic. Stephen McHattie even appears in both films. Like the 2007 film based on Frank Miller's graphic novel "re-imagining" of the infamous battle between 300 Spartans and the Persians, "Immortals" is at its best when serving up a smörgåsbord of off the wall visuals and epic action.
As Theseus, the man who would defeat the Minotaur, Henry Cavill brings a heroic nobility to the part that the film probably doesn't deserve - which makes it a shame that he doesn't have a stronger villain to play off of. With his bloated beer belly and gravelly monotone mumbling, Mickey Rourke comes across as a painfully bland villain, failing to bring the kind of fire to the part that an old school actor such as the late Stephen Boyd no doubt would have brought. Even when he lights a helpless priest on fire or orders that the weak, effeminate coward Lysander (Joseph Morgan) be castrated by having his manhood smashed beyond repair with a really big sledgehammer as punishment for betraying his own people, Rourke never sets off the kind of sparks you would expect a larger than life villain to have.
Among the films visual assets, Frieda Pinto and Isabel Lucas make the most of their roles as Theseus's seer lover and the daughter of Zeus.