Shadow’s Overall Rating: 7/10– I thoroughly enjoyed myself and was pleasantly surprised by the overall plot and the mythical stuff added in. While it doesn’t break any new, crazy ground, it is fun and lacks cringe worthy moments that tend to bring down movies like this.
Shadow’s Theater Rating: 7/10
Shadow’s Re-Watchability Rating: 7/10
Worth: Matinee Threater ($7) + Used DVD ($10) = $17
Rotten Tomatoe’s Rating: 62%, 5.3/10
Audience: 65%, 7.2/10
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Plot in a Nut Shell: This is Hercules after the Labors, where him and a group of warriors are now mercenaries, doing jobs for gold. He is hired by a King to train his army but not everything is as it seems. Is Hercules a man or a legendary demi-god?
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Spoiler Free Thoughts…
– Talk about being totally caught off guard. The trailers show you NOTHING of importance. Zip, nada, zilch. The movie is MUCH more interesting than the trailers make it seem. Much less cliche.
– This might be spoiler territory but it gives it away within 5 minutes of the movie so I will touch on it because it is very important IMO: a lot of the movie has to deal with whether Hercules is THE HERCULES you know from the mythology. The demi-god son of Zeus slayer of monsters haunted by Hera. Is he that person… or he is just a great warrior with a legend behind his feats that has beat exaggerated to the point where people think he is a god? It is a great aspect of the movie and totally unexpected and MADE the movie in my opinion. Made it much more interesting than the standard sword and sandals movie.
– The Rock killed it as Hercules. Not just his acting, which is your standard Rock stuff, but he was fucking HUGE. Literally massive. I dare say it is the biggest portrayal of any movie hero since… the days of Arnold? Even his quads were massive. The Rock is single handedly trying to bring back the roided out alpha male hero.
– The action was above average although nothing ground breaking. Some of the stuff Hercules did was “LOL FUCK YEAH MANE!” and there was enough action in the movie to keep the movie moving briskly.
– This movie DOES NOT focus on the 12 labors, at least not how you think. The stuff from the trailers happens in the first 5 minutes of the movie.
– The secondary mercenary killers were ok. Nothing too crazy unless they begin talking about Hercules and then it adds some more depth to them. They were adequate and each enjoyed their own action moment.
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Spoiler Filled Thoughts After the Jump…
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– I love the fact they never confirmed or fully denied Hercules being a son of Zeus. While verbally they said much of it was just legend and story… he did things no mortal man could do and even the stuff they did made the other characters think, “wait… what?”
– One thing that was never confirmed or denied: were the Gods even real? Were the labors real? Was that one guy an actual sooth sayer? He kept implying he had to “finish his 12th labor” but throughout the whole movie we were told and shown that the myths were pretty much exaggerated bullshit. So that was a bit confusing. A minor quibble though.
The Mind of Shadow 