Beowulf: DVD, HD DVD Review (2008)

Robert Zemeckis' "Beowulf" has a great ending--powerful, fiery and exciting. It’s a nice feat of showmanship, the best part of the film.

You should know this because what comes before it, with few exceptions, can be long and tedious.

Set in Denmark and based on the 6th century Anglo-Saxon poem, the movie updates it all for the present with hot bods, nudity and sex--just what we need.

It follows the great warrior Beowulf (Ray Winstone) as he accepts the challenge of a king (Anthony Hopkins) to kill the giant Grendel (Crispin Glover), who is busy wreaking havoc upon the king’s land.

It’s a situation that escalates into Beowulf also battling Grendel’s slinky minx of a mother (Angelina Jolie, of course) and finally their offspring, who has the ability to morph into a fire-breathing dragon.

Along the way, Beowulf drinks his share of mead, becomes king, garners the love of a queen (Robin Wright Penn), enjoys a lover on the side, grows a conscience and keeps his rock-solid abs throughout.

So, at the very least, plenty of the film’s target audience of young males will want to be him, but here’s the thing: The film follows Zemeckis’ 2004 movie, "The Polar Express," in that it uses performance-capture technology to turn its large cast of human actors into something that wavers between human and humanoid.

What we have here is a movie that renders beautiful interiors and landscapes but which fails to faithfully capture the human form. The characters’ eyes, for instance, are unnervingly without soul. As such, there are problems with the technology that make for a distracting experience, one the movie struggles to overcome--but doesn't.

Rated PG-13. Grade: C-

Read the unedited review here.

View the trailer below: