Loyola Greyhound

Issue date: 11/20/07 Section: Arts & Society

Media Credit: MCT campus "Beowulf" (starring Ray Winstone, left) may be a feast for its viewers' eyes with stunning visual graphics (seen through the lens of 3D glasses for its audience) but what it has in computer generated skill, it lacks in both good taste and acting ability. Angelina Jolie costars as the evil mother of an evil monster, and is reduced to showing skin in the film.

Sitting down in the theater chairs with 3D specs that look more like 80s sunglasses, and with candy in my left hand and a soda in my right; I was ready for the classic tale from English class to come to life with soaring dragons and the heroic Great Beowulf.

With the film version you get dragons, the Grendel and Beowulf with stunning visual effects but not a great story. Instead, you are left with a cheap comic book "adaptation" with a naked Angelina Jolie and enough computer graphic gruesomeness to make Michael Myers flinch.

The film follows the legendary warrior Beowulf as he comes to the aid of a Kingdom plagued by a man-eating monster by the name of Grendel. The monster also has an even more intimidating mother whose conniving spirit entrances the powerful men she comes across and sets a curse on the town in the form of violence and destruction; a curse to add to the plot that is an ill-conceived invention of screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary.

For over a year the film pushed a campaign on the movie-geek websites filled with excited flourish over the advancing technology of "performance capture" (the middle ground between live action and computer graphics), and boasting a cast of Academy Award winners. These include Anthony Hopkins as Hrothgar, Ray Winstone as Beowulf, John Malkovich as Unferth, Crispin Glover as Grendel and, yes, the ever-popular sex symbol Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother.

With all of this promise behind the premise of the film it becomes painfully clear that when the end credits roll, some promises are hard to keep in a blood thirsty, sex hungry new Hollywood action film. Yes, that is what the story of Beowulf is reduced to in 2007 cinema.

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