Beowulf (1999)

The 1999 film Beowulf is one incredible b-movie.  If anything I have it to thank for the existence of this blog.  Had it not spurred me back into watching movies not conventionally good then I would not be here writing this.  The creators are the same people who made the Mortal Kombat films so expect some blatant similarities in costumes and techno soundtrack.  Many people despise the soundtrack but I am apparently impervious to Techno.  There are even a few songs I like in here.  The film is set in a sort of retro-futuristic world.  You know the type.  They still use horses as transportation even though they are capable of making a giant steam-powered castle with moving parts.  Basically anything they like from fantasy and sci-fi and they just mix it together as they please.  It stars Christopher Lambert as Beowulf and Rhona Mitra as Hrothgar’s daughter Kyra.  Did I mention the monster in this film is actually a monster?  Seriously, they call him the beast.

The film begins with Grendel the beast slaughtering people in the castle Outpost until king Hrothgar and some men come to confront it.  Grendel leaves upon the sight of Hrothgar after refusing to fight him. Immediately after that a terrified woman named Petra decides to get the hell out of Dodge and flees the Outpost.  Some of you may recognize Petra as Venezuelan actress Patricia Velasquez who guest starred on the show Arrested Development as the character Marta.  No?  Well I can’t blame you.  There were three people who played Marta in that show anyway.

Anyway this is a very bad move as a group of people guard the Outpost to try to keep people from leaving there fearing they are infected with evil from the beast.  They intend to kill Marta Petra but before they can Beowulf rides up and demands they release her.  The music goes all The Good the Bad and the Ugly and when they refuse a fight starts out.  After Beowulf wins the leader of the men lets them go.  But when Petra realizes Beowulf is heading back to the Outpost she runs back to the men and promptly gets killed.

Once in the castle the movie drags for a little bit so they can establish things like Beowulf as a 90’s antihero, and various subplots.   You have your standard love triangle between dark Beowulf, Kyra and Kyra’s friend Roland who just isn’t superhumanly strong enough to get promoted to love interest.  Things pick back up again when Grendel stops by to kill people predator style.  He kills the Outposts weapon suppler leaving them with only his young and incompetent apprentice.  For precaution, they lock the women and children into a sanctuary (not Kyra because she is the designated action-girl).  Grendel is already in there so he butchers everyone while Hrothgar’s men struggle to get inside. 

Once they do we are treated to an action sequence with techno music, Beowulf with a ridiculous arsenal of weapons (he has his signiture sword with a bicycle brake on it, two crossbows, two retractable hook things, and a knife that fires a pizza cutter), and flips.  Oh yes, the flips.  You know how Jean-Claude Van Damme always use to do splits during fights no matter how pointless it was or what the circumstances were?  Beowulf does that with flips in this movie.  Beowulf is severely injured by Grendel but like fellow anti-hero Wolverine heals like it was nothing.

The film now tries to resolve some loose ends.  Kyra tells Beowulf she killed her late husband because he was abusive (Roland was the other suspect).  Beowulf takes the young weapon maker under his arm and helps him overcome his doubts by telling him to forge an important weapon.  Unsurprisingly, Grendel turns out to be Hrothgar’s half human son which he had with Grendel’s mother (played by Layla Roberts) who is some sort of Succubus like demon. Yeah you just can’t seem to get around that in Beowulf movies.

Now in what is probably the greatest moment of the film, Beowulf takes on Grendel in an rematch.  They are fighting in a partially flooded dark room which makes the scene ridiculously fun when you see Lambert the stunt-guy evade the rubber-suit Grendel’s silly arm-flailing with his series of impressive flips.  Beowulf gets backhanded and choked in moments of cheesy glory.  Water splashes everywhere and before it settles Beowulf removes the arm of Grendel with the small blade the weapon-master made him.

Now in the poem this is where they would hang the arm on the wall of Heorot to celebrate the monsters demise, in this movie they hang it outside the Outpost where the men are camped out just so they will goddam leave them alone.  Beowulf and Kendra get together and Beowulf reveals that he is the half demon offspring of Baal.  However Grendel’s mother comes and wrecks the moment by seducing and killing Roland.  She then reveals the truth of Grendel’s origin to Hrothgar and Kendra and tells them that Hrothgar’s wife committed suicide after she was told.  She says they are on what has been her land since ancient times and Grendel is the rightful heir.  Hrothgar attacks her but the now one armed Grendel kills his old man.  Beowulf then promptly kills Grendel so he can move on to more important matters. 

The final fight has Grendel’s mother has her turn into a horrifically bad computer animation with actress Layla Roberts face on it.  This scene isn’t near as good as the Grendel fight but the crappy transformation alone is worth a few points.  He wins by cutting her throat and setting her on fire.  This leads to the destruction of the Outpost, luckily though anyone who isn’t named Beowulf or Kendra is already dead.  After the two make their escapes Kendra insists on staying with Beowulf and they ride away.

Overall the film is good stupid fun as an action film in my book.  Some would say that it strays too far from the poem but in my opinion while the setting is completely different it is the only film of the three which has a good vs. evil theme.  Sure Beowulf was part demon and all that but it was the Ninties and they loved their antiheroes to the point of madness.  It wasn’t a clash of civilizations like (the soon to be reviewed) The Thirteenth Warrior or some sort of crappy political commentary like Beowulf and Grendel.  In this way in spite of all the absolutely zany additions it stayed true to the heart of the poem.  Overall there is no way I can give this film less than a 5/5 considering how much I have watched it.  Check it out if you have questionable taste.

Beowulf and Grendel

To celebrate the beginnings of my reviewing blog I am going to try to start it with a triple creature feature.  That’s right, three films filled with bloodthirsty monsters.  Not just any monsters but Grendel and his mother.  That’s right, two of the biggest named monsters in ancient literature. Well, okay, two of the three films are actually more realistic depictions and so in them Grendel only really counts as some sort of Neanderthal-like species.  Scary, right?  Because I’m sure you are like me and Australopithecus haunted your nightmares when you were a kid, too, correct?  Ah, well, one out of three ain’t bad.

The first film I will discuss is the movie Beowulf and Grendel was released in 2005 and aimed at humanizing the scourge of Heorot.  In this film Grendel is more the hero than Beowulf and far from being treated as an evil descendant of Cain is (intended to be) portrayed as a wronged and persecuted troll. Let me just begin by saying this film replaces archetypal themes completely with political correctness. The film begins where a young Grendel (played by a child actor with fake facial hair) witnesses Hrothgar murder his father before his eyes and swears revenge on the Danes.  For those of you familiar with the poem you are probably calling bullshit on this since the poem says this of Grendel and his mother, “They are fatherless creatures, and their whole ancestry is hidden in a past of demons and ghosts.  They dwell apart among wolves on the hills, on windswept crags and treacherous keshes, where cold streams pour down the mountain and disappear under mist and moorland.”  Oh yeah, and Grendel killed people because he was an evil descendent of Cain not because of daddy issues.  Still I find this change somewhat forgivable in the sense that that line makes little sense taken literally considering we already know the lines Patriarch.

Maybe Beowulf will be more interesting at least?  I mean he was played by Gerard Butler the man who was Leonidas in 300.  That film may be stupid but it certainly had great action sequences.  Surely he can bring on the action like few else.  Nope, Beowulf does just about nothing of importance in this film.  He mainly talks with Hrothgar and Grendel, gets angsty about whether he is doing the right thing, gets bitched at by his designated love interest (the worst character by far), and then gets angsty some more.  Get this, this trainwreck is the only adaption of the poem where Beowulf doesn’t kill Grendel.  Instead Grendel chops off his own arm after getting trapped by a rope after raiding Heorot. The protagonist in this film is useless. The small action scenes are mainly garbage. He is a far cry from the Beowolf from the poem who can swim for five days while killing nine sea-beasts.  To the films credit Butler is given one chance to display his skill in a cool but extremely short action scene which is unfortunately used as a cutaway gag.  Beowulf tells someone that he doesn’t get mad during fights and then it cuts to him having an admittedly awesome fight where an enraged Beowulf takes on a gang of guys and then cuts back to his smug face.  I hate this film.

Hrothgar, the famed Danish king, can be summed up in three words in this film, whipped, drunkard and coward.  His wife berates him for being shocked by Grendel’s massacre of his people.  Unlike the king who would drink at feasts to be merry now he drinks to try to appease his guilt for pissing off Grendel.  He expresses a deep fear of death and hell which later drives him to convert to Christianity which was preached by a freaky mercenary who would randomly froth at the mouth.  Yeah this film is pretty blatant with its antichristian stance even though by the time Beowulf was written down it was fully Christianized.  I really resent being beaten over the head with an message like this irregardless if I agree with it or not. 

The film tells us that Grendel won’t kill Hrothgar because even though he killed his father he spared him as a child.  For that the kind-hearted Grendel instead murders innocent Danes who have no connection with his father’s death.  Such benevolence!  This might make sense with the wergild (or man-price) and blood-feud concept of the time period was properly explained and included but considering this film is totally modernized Grendel is really just a prick.  The film crappily crams down the idea that Grendel has the moral high ground so much that Hrothgar totally becomes the most likeable character.  Someone who actually wants to kill Grendel and not talk about their feelings with him?  I like this cat already!  Oh and Hrothgar totally cusses like a sailor (Viking?) which is so idiotic it is funny and gives the movie all its best lines.

Grendel’s father was not the only new character to be introduced.  The writer knowing that the poem Beowulf had almost no women and in an attempt to try to expand the demographic of the movie created an important female character, Selma.  The pagan witch Selma is the typical Hollywood character type of the prostitute with a heart of gold.  It is implied throughout the film that she has some strong tie to Grendel.  It is later revealed that Grendel once raped her in the night and she gave birth to his half-troll son.  Even though this is a heinous crime, she is fiercely protective of Grendel and her true anger is directed against what she views as the true evil, the Danes.  Making matters more bizarre she is meant to be portraying a female role model despite her justifying her own rape.  The implications of this plot I frankly find gross and disturbing.  But the worst part of all is she probably could have convinced Grendel to stop his rampages at any time, and saved countless lives, had she actually wanted to.  While she is intended to be a feminist character she seems to be one in the Valerie Salonas mold.

                I really wish beastiality wasn’t an important part of so many Beowulf films.  This film is probably the worst offender of all due to its hypocrisy.  At one point Hrothgar makes fun of a rival king, Sig, who he claimed had sex with animals and Beowulf ate it up and laughed uproariously. Considering Grendel is indeed mentally retarded and forced sex upon someone the acts are really not all that different.  Then the movie expects us to go awww to the interspecies rape towards the end.  Beowulf then has sex with Selma herself after she tells him about it because….uh.  What the hell movie?

                After Grendel dies of his self-inflicted wounds his mother flips out and starts killing people.  She is some sort of sea-hag like in the poem which I would be thankful for if it didn’t completely defeat the purpose of making Grendel halfway realistic.  Anyway Beowulf kills her in a scene not even the movie seems to care about.  Seriously, Grendel’s kid watches the murder of the sea-hag but he gives up on revenge after Beowulf pays his respects to Grendel’s grave.  The kid is not at all concerned about his grandmother as she was clearly filler anyway.  Beowulf sails off again to be useless elsewhere.  Roll credits.

                Don’t get me wrong I love bad movies but this film is just unforgivable.  My final verdict is a 1/5 due to the anachronistic profanity being somewhat funny for a few minutes.  I award no points for the beautiful shots of Iceland because even if you film in a beautiful location that doesn’t fix a horrible film.  The film is very much a product of being created in the Bush years.  Just as The Crucible is more about McCarthyism than witchcraft, Beowulf and Grendel feels more like a backlash against the cultural stereotype of good Americans and evil terrorists than an serious attempt at retelling Beowulf.    Considering that the archetypes that Beowulf is based on are timeless, I think it a shame to use them to comment on current cultural attitudes that can change like the wind.  Just as Grendel pisses on the door to Heorot in the beginning of the film writer Andrew Berzins pisses on the poem.  Also like troll piss, this film really stinks. Overall, I cannot recommend this film to anyone but considering the name of this blog chances are you might just watch it anyway.