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Reviews
Grendel (2007)
They weren't Vikings, and Vikings didn't wear horned helmets anyway
After having seen the Canadian/Icelandic/British 2004 production of "Beowulf & Grendel," which I thought brilliant and stunning, I approached this--the first of 3 newer Beowulf movies due out this year--with trepidation. As soon as I heard "Viking" and saw the horned helmets, I groaned. These were Migration Era Swedes and Danes, not Vikings (they came later). And even the Vikings never wore horns on their helmets (horns make it easy for your enemy to knock your helmet off and then brain you). Then there's Hrolfgar's palace, which looks like a set for a movie about Greece or Rome, not 6th-century Denmark. The swords and armor look like props left over from earlier films set in various historic periods. I spotted weapons that might have been used by Crusaders in "Kingdom of Heaven," and one character was even wielding a Windlass Steelcrafts reproduction movie sword from "Beowulf & Grendel"! Beyond the basic plot of the original epic poem, the writing was dismal and the acting totally wooden and unconvincing. The biggest yuk was a secret-weapon crossbow, complete with sighting scope and exploding projectiles, that looked like something bought from Iraqi insurgents. The special-effects monster and his mom were so on steroids that Beowulf could never have torn off an arm, as he did in the poem. Thank the gods for bazooka crossbows! I could go on, but I won't.
Beowulf & Grendel (2005)
Postmodern masterpiece
This film can be enjoyed on several levels. Enjoy it as a gorgeous, well-played historical action film with a little sex thrown in, or as a triumph by a director who was obsessed with making a film in the remotest part of Iceland, without CGI, in unbelievably bad weather, or as the most historically-accurate "viking" film ever made, or as a postmodern deconstruction of the Anglo- Saxon epic poem.
Other recent attempts to film British epics try poorly to tell the "true" story behind the legends ("King Arthur"), or to update the legends' appeal by throwing in poetry from centuries later ("Tristan and Isolde"). "Beowulf & Grendel" is faithful to its epic-poem source and its era, but it also shows how the poem might have been shaped by the hands of a pagan skald recently converted to Christianity. In reality: injustice, inhumanity, brutality, cruelty. To the poet: good vs evil, light vs darkness, hero vs monster, God vs Satan.
The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)
My favorite swashbuckler
As a kid I read the Anthony Hope novel and loved the Stewart Granger film version of it. As an adult, I discovered the Ronald Colman version (upon which the Granger film was based, scene by scene, camera angle by camera angle), and since Colman is one of my all-time favorite actors (the personification of British suave), I fell in love with it. Every member of the supporting cast of the later version is superb, but can't quite beat Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Raymond Massey, Mary Astor, and David Niven. It's become my all-time favorite swashbuckler. A tale of a reluctant hero and a bittersweet romance with lots of action and witty dialog, it compares favorably with another, slightly later tale of a reluctant hero and a bittersweet romance, "Casablanca." I can't wait for the DVD to come out.