Her­cules

Her­cules is not a bad film. Her­cules is a dire film. Bad films can be fun. Brett Ratner’s pre­vi­ous out­ing, Tow­er Heist, was bad fun. It had a fruity cast, a time­ly (by Hollywood’s stan­dards) plot, and a more than a few gig­gles – intend­ed or oth­er­wise – along the way. Her­cules is horrid.

It employs a cast of mid-range genre go-to water-car­ri­ers (John Hurt, Ian McShane, the sur­pris­ing­ly excel­lent Rufus Sewell) to stretch a gener­ic-yet-con­fus­ing Greek myth across the dispir­it­ing, non­sen­si­cal, over-famil­iar ruins of a store-bought plot lit­tered with sign­post­ed dou­ble-cross­es and mud­dy moti­va­tions. And yet, despite all the chi­canery and hand-wring­ing, the whole thing wouldn’t mer­it more than a cou­ple of scenes in Game of Thrones. Peter Jack­son would have it all wrapped up before breakfast.

Based on a graph­ic nov­el by Steve Moore (unre­lat­ed long­time cohort of Alan Moore), Her­cules is set after the twelve tri­als of leg­end, with the fabled war­rior now a sword for hire. Herc (Dwayne John­son) and his band of rogu­ish mis­fits – a seer, a jok­er, a berserk­er, an Ama­zon sharp­shoot­er, a lacon­ic right-hand man – take up an offer by the king of Thrace (John Hurt) to train his peo­ple into an army strong enough to repel an invad­ing horde of cen­taur warriors.

That we were able to con­vey this basic set-up is no thanks to the inco­her­ent, inel­e­gant dia­logue (choice line – ​“He was born the son of Zeus – the Zeus!”), laboured flash­backs and the lack of estab­lish­ing shots. Sev­er­al key scenes feel as if they’re miss­ing, either chopped out of the film to keep pac­ing brisk or ripped out of the script to keep the bud­get down. Con­se­quent­ly it’s not until well into the sec­ond act that the creep­ing yet thun­der­ing real­i­sa­tion dawns that this is the film. All that stilt­ed josh­ing and dusty mean­der­ing wasn’t just a scene-set­ting pre­am­ble. That was the film.

Even this pauci­ty of spec­ta­cle could con­ceiv­ably be turned to the film’s advan­tage. That there are no gods or fan­ta­sy mon­sters in Her­cules is its one intrigu­ing aspect. Our hero’s myth­ic birth and super­hu­man deeds are per­haps no more than a mar­ket­ing cam­paign spun by his wry pub­lic rela­tions mouth­piece (Sewell). Had it been expand­ed on or made more cen­tral to the plot, this con­ceit could have done much to inject the film with some much need­ed imag­i­na­tion and humour, but that idea would require a direc­tor of more skill and dar­ing to tru­ly fly. Rat­ner instead plays this angle down to a degree – almost apolo­get­i­cal­ly so – that one could be for­giv­en for not pick­ing up on it at all.

Nor­mal­ly such good val­ue, John­son (who is start­ing to look uncan­ni­ly like Nico­las Cage) has dialed back his usu­al line in hulk­ing self-dep­re­ca­tion just when he needs it most. This is sure­ly the role he was born to play, but instead of embrac­ing the revi­sion­ist nature of the film and delv­ing into the gulf that sep­a­rates man from myth, he plays it most­ly straight. He cer­tain­ly doesn’t seem to be enjoy­ing him­self up there, and by the clos­ing stretch looks as pleased as every­one else to just get this one over the fin­ish­ing line.

Rat­ner won’t be going away any time soon (IMDb: ​‘He attend­ed NYU film school, cur­rent­ly lives in a $3.6m house in Bev­er­ly Hills’), but the breezy, hyper­ki­net­ic fun of the Rush Hour movies already seems a long dis­tant mem­o­ry. It all should’ve worked out so well, but it went so very bad. With Her­cules, he ham­mers yet anoth­er nail into his gold­en cof­fin. Next up? Bev­er­ly Hills Cop 4. Gonna need more nails.