Venetian Grind.

Let’s get right down to brass tacks: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Tourist, his major studio follow-up to The Lives of Others (#11 on the decade list) is brazenly, woefully, blog-stoppingly awful. I’m serious — this movie is terribad. It’s been awhile since I’ve felt the urge to get up and leave in the middle of a film so strongly (and that’s something I never do, because if I break that seal, it’ll be katy bar the door from then on.) But it’s probably just as well I stayed, since pretty soon thereafter I got the 21 Grams giggles to carry me through this canal of Venetian drek.

So, oof, where to begin? It sounds like von Donnersmarck was mostly a hired gun for an already-troubled production here, so let’s give him a pass to start. (Sam Worthington, Charlize Theron, and Tom Cruise — who mined similar material this year in the considerably better Knight & Day — were all attached as stars at various points, and director Alfonso Cuaron was rumored to be replacing von Donnersmarck when he tried to walk away early on.) So how about the two leads? Angelina Jolie is one of the world’s great beauties, and Johnny Depp is no slouch in the heartthrob department either. But, here, she looks cadaverous, he looks paunchy, and together they have zero chemistry whatsoever.

I’ve long thought that Depp is one of our best working actors, but it has to be said — After two dismal Pirates sequels, he’s now been front and center in two of 2010’s worst bombs, this and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. And after seeing Depp play so many weird parts over the years, one has to wonder if he’s now like butter scraped over too much bread: Maybe he just can’t do normal anymore. (But now that I think about it, has Depp ever played a convincing “normal” romantic lead? Benny & Joon, maybe? Gilbert Grape?)

Anyway, Depp’s character — Wisconsin widower and schoolteacher Frank Tupelo — is meant to be just an average guy in over his head, unwittingly caught up in a spy drama as The Wrong Man. (Jolie’s character picks him at random on a train to be a mark for the Interpol-types following her.) But Depp seemingly can’t help but play Frank as all twitchy and affected. He speaks with Hunter Thompson cadences half the time and eyes his surroundings — and his co-star, for that matter — like it or she are going to sprout wings any moment. He can’t even sip his nightcap without Jack-Sparrowing his way through it. “Hey, look, a beverage! In my hand! I shall drink it! Ooh, it kicks!”

And then there’s Jolie, who also seems bored throughout (and who has her own 2010 sins to atone for in Salt.) For one, Jolie and Depp definitely don’t seem to like each other very much: There’s no romantic spark between them at all. (So much for “tourist attraction.”) But the main problem here is they’ve given her character — Elise Clifton-Ward, beautiful femme fatale with a hidden agenda — a British accent. Now, Jolie can either act or do the accent, but, for whatever reason, she pretty clearly can’t do both at the same time. (And, as you’ll see if you somehow end up watching this disaster, she definitely can’t act, do the accent, and drive a boat.)

And so most of the movie Jolie just seems very far away, a cold neutron star. Her sheer presence can overpower a film sometimes — say, her turn as Matt Damon’s crazy wife in The Good Shepherd. But, here, any spark of personality, wit, or warmth is quickly snuffed out by her stultifyingly bad impression of an English person. It’s like the prom queen somehow got roped into performing in the high-school production of Oliver Twist, and she’s just going through the motions so it won’t negatively affect her cred.

So Jolie and Depp are definitely a drag on the material. But, to be honest, it’s hard to imagine a different set of A-list stars with real romantic chemistry — say, I dunno, George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones — pulling off this film either. Some fetching images of Venetian splendor notwithstanding, there’s just no there there. The Tourist moves at a snail’s pace for most of its run, and not in a contemplative Eurofilm way like The American. And more often than not, the movie makes no sense.

To take a few examples: Frank finds himself running from Russian mobsters but doesn’t think to change his appearance in any way. (Here’s a tip — lose the Jack Sparrow ‘do.)The Big Bad dispatches his minions in such an over-the-top Bondian manner that nobody would ever actually work for the guy (although that might explain why said Russian goons can’t hit the broad side of a barn.) And there’s a ridiculous third-act twist which many will see coming within the first five minutes of the movie. But just because you see it coming doesn’t make it plausible.

Granted, these are the type of foibles and Scooby Doo logic you might forgive in a more enjoyable film. But with nothing to latch onto here for entertainment value, they stick out like a sore thumb. So, is there anything good about The Tourist? Well, the movie does feature a cast of obviously European actors, which gives it more of a sense of place than your average studio film. And it starts out with a surveillance scene, which made me think fondly of The Lives of Others for a few beats at the start. Um…Timothy Dalton’s in it, so that’s cool, I guess. (He fares slightly better than poor Paul Bettany, who’s stuck with the clueless inspector role.)

But that’s about it, really. Make no mistake: This is a bad, bad film. Mr. von Donnersmarck, Mr. Depp, Ms. Jolie: Let us never speak of this trip again.

Strange Trips.

In the teaser bin, superspy Angelina Jolie (again?) gets befuddled traveler Johnny Depp in over his head in the trailer for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Tourist, also with Paul Bettany, Rufus Sewell, Timothy Dalton, and Ralf Moeller. (Not exactly The Lives of Others, is it? And this soon after Salt, Jolie feels like a red flag.)

Meanwhile, Matt Damon sees dead people in the trailer for Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, also with Bryce Dallas Howard, Jay Mohr, Jenifer Lewis, Cecile De France, and Richard Kind. Eh, maybe — This definitely looks like a potential schmaltzfest.

Salt-n-Tepid.

So, after writing movie reviews here the past several years, I have come to discover there’s only one real downside to the enterprise. Every so often, I happen to catch a movie that’s so by-the-numbers and pedestrian that it sorta stops GitM dead. I mean, an unmitigated stinker like Southland Tales or Gods and Generals can be as easy to write about as a good film. And even an annoyingly botched flick like Alice in Wonderland can compel a few paragraphs of copy, out of sheer annoyance if nothing else.

But then you get a bland, summer-movie-for-summer-movie’s-sake like Phillip Noyce’s ludicrous espionage thriller Salt, and the site grinds to a halt. Salt isn’t out-and-out terrible or anything. It’s just so perfunctory, so lazy and lackluster in its storytelling, that even commenting on it one way or the other seems like more than the movie deserves. (FWIW, this is the second half of the Kids are All Right double-header I mentioned a week ago.) Probably the most interesting thing I can say about Salt, other than that its Anna Chapman meets Terror Babies, Cold War-hangover plotting could be ripped from the headlines of right-wing nightmare, is that it somehow manages to be both predictable and preposterous at the same time. [Major spoilers to follow, but if you haven’t seen it by now…don’t.]

Predictable, because Salt is so clearly the type of movie that wants to blow your mind that a second-act “twist” — think No Way Out — is well nigh inevitable. (But even when it happens, the filmmakers don’t have the guts to follow through: Angelina Jolie’s character can’t just be undercover. She’s deep, deep undercover.) And predictable because, sorta like Peter Sarsgaard skulking around in Knight & Day a few weeks ago, anybody who’s vaguely into movies will know Liev Schrieber isn’t taking the role of Government Functionary #2 unless there’s some scenery to chew into at some point. (It may not be his fault, but Schrieber has become William Hurtish to the extreme to me — just a hambone waiting to happen.)

And yet, Salt is preposterous. Because, even though you kinda see the big turns coming in all their ridiculous glory, Salt still does not make a lick of sense. As the trailers indicate, Evelyn Salt (Jolie) is a CIA agent who is forced to go on the run from her bosses (Schrieber and a wasted Chiwetel Ejiofor) after a KGB defector (Daniel Olbrychski) outs her as a Russian spy. This mostly involves a lot of running and hiding and hair-dye and whatnot. (Shoplifting too. Here’s your drinking game to make Salt palatable whenever it hits cable — Drink every time Jolie ganks something.)

And, as I’ve already alluded, at a certain point in the middle going, Agent Salt [Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler] switches teams. (You can figure this out even if you’re a touch slow, or you’re watching on a plane without sound or something, because Jolie starts vamping it up like Natasha from the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, and even starts wearing a Russian hat as a signifier.) So, ok, edgy second-act twist, I guess…except the whole getting-outed-by-the-KGB-guy plot at the very beginning now doesn’t make any sense at all. (You could argue he was “activating” her — but he could’ve done that with a phone call.) Multiply this sort of nonsense by three acts, and you end up with a mild fiasco by the final reel.

But that makes Salt sound more howlingly terrible than it in fact is. Phillip Noyce has made some very good movies in his day (The Quiet American, Rabbit-Proof Fence), and he’s nothing if not competent. But his action sequences are just that: competent, middling, and kind of a bore. In terms of actioners, Noyce previously made the two Harrison Ford Jack Ryan movies, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, and it’s probably not a positive sign for the shenanigans here that in neither film is the most memorable scene an action sequence. (In Games, it’s Ryan watching the video-gamey US counter-strike on the bad guy’s base from the Pentagon. In Danger, it’s Ryan playing cat-and-mouse on the PC with the bureaucratic bad guy next door.)

Here’s, there’s some passable stunt work, to be sure. But Salt is one of those action movies where the geography and physics seem completely random. (And I don’t just mean the rail-thin Jolie knocking out gimongous cops and robbers cold with one roundhouse punch — They mostly get around that with karate chops and such.) Salt is in downtown DC, then a highway overpass, then a full-on highway, then back in DC. She’s ten feet above the bad guys on an elevator…no, she’s five minutes behind them, in some random hallway we didn’t see before…no, I’m sorry, she’s right behind them again, because the big door is closing and she just makes it through. One gets no sense of danger or of propulsion when Jolie just seems to be teleporting around to accommodate the needs of the script.

As for Jolie herself, well she’s a movie star, and better than the film probably deserves. But, when you get to thinking on it, that’s pretty much always Jolie’s m.o., isn’t it? From Alexander to Mr. & Mrs. Smith to the Tomb Raiders to The Bone Collector (also a Noyce picture) to Wanted, Jolie tends to be the most impressive thing about otherwise terrible films. It’s a neat trick, sure, but at a certain point, you would think it’d be time to exercise a little more quality control, right?

Salt isn’t the worst film of Angelina Jolie’s career or anything, nor is it the worst film of the summer, but it is a lowest-common-denominator, assembly-line entertainment that ends up being both drab and absurd. My advice is save your money, comrades. We may have a hard winter ahead of us yet.

A Double-Cross Summer.

In the wake of this weekend’s Clash of the Titans reboot (which, btw, is not doing so hot, review-wise), several new summer trailers with a common theme: In probably the most promising of the lot, CIA badass Angelina Jolie has to go rogue for God and Country in the second trailer for Phillip Noyce’s Salt, also with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Liev Schreiber, and Andre Braugher. (I was sorta expecting a No Way Out ending at first, but after this, ten bucks says Schreiber’s the mole.)

Elsewhere, Liam Neeson et al love it when a TV reboot comes together in trailer #2 for Joe Carnahan’s The A-Team, also with Jessica Biel, Patrick Wilson, Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copley, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, and Gerald McRaney. Eh, still on the fence about this one — I’ll probably end up seeing it despite myself.

And not to be confused with this squad or the equally double-crossed Losers, Sylvester Stallone leads a team of action stars and 80’s has-beens in search of an easy paycheck in the new trailer for The Expendables, with Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Steve Austin, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, and, briefly, Bruce Willis and Governor Schwarzenegger. Lordy, that looks all kinds of terrible.

Update: Speaking of looking terrible, a restricted trailer for Jorma Taccone’s MacGruber, i.e. Will Forte’s SNL take on MacGyver, is also making the rounds. Along for the ride are Val Kilmer, Ryan Phillippe, Powers Boothe, Maya Rudolph, and the venerable Kristen Wiig, who hopefully gets funnier material elsewhere in the film than she does here.

The Plame Supremacy.

Take-no-guff CIA agent Angelina Jolie is forced to become a rogue asset when she’s falsely outed as a Russian spy in the new trailer for Phillip Noyce’s Salt, also with Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Noyce has been making international-minded prestige pics of late (Rabbit-Proof Fence, Catch a Fire, The Quiet American), so this is more of a throwback to his early Jack Ryan days (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger.) And Jolie’s never hard to watch, and I think she could make for a fun female Bond…but let’s hope this is better than their last pic together, The Bone Collector (or, for that matter, Doug Liman’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which most obviously comes to mind here.)

Celeb-Spotting at Invesco.

Hey y’all. After a crack-of-the-morning flight out of Denver (which included a spry Mickey Dolenz and a tired-looking Hayden Panettiere), I’m back in VA now, have rested up, and have put up the rest of my Invesco pics over at Flickr. In case anyone’s interested, here are a few more thoughts about the milieu surrounding Thursday event:

Imagine the DC Nationals playing Game 7 of the World Series at home, and you may get somewhere close to the strangeness that was the stadium environment at Invesco Field. It was definitely a NFL or NBA stadium atmosphere, with all the usual concessions open. But, amid the pretzel vendors, lines for hot dogs, and Obama t-shirt stands, the place was also obviously teeming with DC-types — pols, journalists, celebrities, and of course their many, many handlers. So, if you walked around the concourse a few times (as I did during the Sheryl Crow set, for example), you were bound to see tons of notable people waiting anxiously in the condiment queue, and/or one of the gaggle of C-level talking heads “trying not to be seen,” hoping to be seen. It was all quite bizarre.

In lieu of a list of all the random people I saw wandering around, I’ll just give a few general impressions:

For whatever reason, I saw members of the MSNBC crew (Howard Fineman, Chris Matthews, Floyd Abrams) floating around a lot more often than the CNN gang, who seemed to stay ensconced in their assigned news-ghetto. (Matthews in particular was ubiquitous. He and Ron Brownstein seemed to live at The Tattered Cover.)

Gov. Ted Strickland had the exact same awkward look on his face in front of the Denver Broncos store that he did while Clinton harangued Obama a few months ago. Must be his tic.

Richard Dreyfuss was holding court over at the Air America nook, and — since someone had passed out promo cards for Oliver Stone’s W while we waited in line the requisite hour to get in — I asked “Vice-President Cheney” to sign it. I guess this shouldn’t be surprising, but he hadn’t seen the teaser poster image at all. (I sometimes forget that for the people involved, movie making is just a job — They don’t feel inclined to follow all the ins and outs of the pre-release like we do.)

Y’know, I guess I owe Washington a bit of an apology. I was complaining the other day about the careerist myopia and general rudeness of DC politicos, but in the end it was a NYC-based historian who most exemplified District-style asshattery to my face. I went up to say hi to a (non-Columbia) academic who writes for several progressive publications, and with whom I’ve shared many a dinner over the past few years, as part of a 20th Century Politics & Society Workshop that I served as rapporteur for. (“Rapporteur” is basically the three-dollar way in graduate school to say “The One who Brings the Food.”) When I said hello and held out my hand, he looked me up and down, gave me the cut direct, and — in true DC form — just turned away to find somebody more important. I guess such behavior comes with the territory sometimes…still, I thought it was pretty goddamned rude.

Word on the street was a lot of A-lister celebrities were out and about: Charlize Theron, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner, Oprah Winfrey, Brad and Angelina, and the like. I didn’t see anybody of that sort, but then again I didn’t go anywhere near the skyboxes.

I did run into Jim Clyburn, my old representative, and got in a shout-out for Flotown. (Florence, SC — his beat, and the place where I grew up.) He seemed nice, as always.

I also ran into Bill Press, the democratic pundit with whom I’ve worked on four books over the years. We got to catch up for a bit, as it turned out our seats were really close to each other.

Nothing against Sheryl Crow, but her set was the time I spent walking around to soak up the ambience. That being said, seeing Stevie Wonder perform “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” was great fun. And, if you’d had told me that one day I would willingly join a crowd of 80,000 to sing along with Michael McDonald, I’d never have believed you. Never say never, I guess. (I was very glad to hear we Dems roll with “America the Beautiful” rather than “God Bless America,” which we can expect in heavy rotation at the RNC next week, I’m sure.)

And, finally, the moment when I was probably the most starstruck at Invesco was when I was edging back to my seat and none other than Wendell Pierce, a.k.a. The Bunk, flew past me. Now, there’s a pic I’d like to have gotten (and I’d love to have picked his brain about David Simon’s forthcoming Treme, but ah well.) Denver ain’t Aruba either, I guess…but Thursday night, it sometimes felt pretty darned close.

Frat Club.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me [twice], you can’t get fooled again. A leaden mishmash of The Matrix, Fight Club, and various much-more-entertaining FPS shoot ’em ups, Timur Bekmanbetov’s aggressively dumb and derivative Wanted is what I’d call a total misfire…if it wasn’t totally in keeping with the similarly adrenaline-fueled, barely coherent nonsense that was Night Watch. I haven’t read the source material, although a quick peek at the Wikipedia (and the fact it was penned by Mark Millar) suggests it was probably much more wry and entertaining than this flick turned out to be (and made more sense, given it’s set in a universe with supervillains.)

As it is, however, Wanted plays like Michael Bay’s version of Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, a hyperbolic, stultifying stupid, aggro-laced paean to the Columbine mentality. Now, I’m all for leave-your-brain-at-the-door actioners, and I could forgive Wanted its video game physics, its cheap-and-easy nihilism, its plagiarism from much better movies, and its intrusive whiteboy angst-metal if the movie actually turned out to be entertaining. But, a few minor setpieces aside (namely the limousine hit, which was everything ths film should’ve been in 60 seconds — perhaps Bekmanbetov should try his hand at videos), Wanted is basically the opposite of fun. Like Night Watch, it’s so bogged down by turgid plotting and long bouts of needless exposition (as well as, in this case, scenes cobbled together from other sources) that the film has no pulse. How bad is it? When a baby started screaming in my theater during the final act (when Morgan Freeman started monologuing yet again in the Fraternity’s library), prompting a yelling match between the disgruntled babyless (“Get that goddamn kid out of here!) and the babied (“F**k you! Babies have rights too!“), I was kinda thankful for, at long last, an entertaining diversion.

As Wanted begins, we are introduced to one Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy, who seemed to have learned his American accent solely from Billy Zabka movies and Sprite commercials.) Gibson is a depressed, obsequious worker drone somewhere in the Great American Cubicle Hive — Chicago, to be precise. He hates his job, he hates his boss, he hates his routine, and his “best” friend is pretty obviously sleeping with his aggravating girlfriend. Gibson is such a capital-L Loser, in fact, that his relatively common name brings up 0 hits on Google. (Sigh…would that were the most ridiculous thing about this movie.) One day, however, he is approached in the local supermarket by “Fox”, an alluring — albeit currently on the wrong side of skinny — minx (Angelina Jolie, trying but clearly bored), who immediately gets him involved in a shoot-out and car chase against a rival killer (Thomas Kretchmann).

From there, Gibson is soon initiated into a secret and ancient cabal of assassins known as the Fraternity, led by Morgan Freeman (playing Lawrence Fishburne playing Morpheus) and including members such as The Gunsmith (Common), The Butcher (Konstantin Khabensky), and The Repairman (Marc Warren). Each of these FPS Minibosses, basically, train Gibson in the arts of their order (it seems to involve him needlessly getting his ass kicked a lot) until he’s reached his full potential as a genetic prodigy, and can thus seek out and kill the murderer of his father. But who are these assassins actually killing, and for what purpose? Even total badasses, it seems, aren’t free of the occasional moral quandary.

That’s basically the set-up — If it sounds like you’ve heard variations on this story before, you have. I neglected to mention the scene involving Gibson’s father’s final mission, which [a] plays almost exactly like Trinity’s early shenanigans in The Matrix and [b] first establishes that, here, bullets not only travel for miles but can bend their trajectory in flight. This may sound like a cool idea to some, I guess — for me, it put me right in House of Flying Daggers mode. Once you’ve established something so ridiculous, it’s hard to feel invested in any of the ensuing action sequences. There’s no danger at all if the laws of physics don’t apply — You’re just going to show me what you show me, and that’s that. (I would argue that movies like The Matrix bend these sorts of rules, but don’t break them. Besides, the Wachowskis introduced a higher-level threat with the Agents anyway.) In any case, magically-bending bullets is only one example of the suspension of disbelief required here. Don’t get me started on the Loom, or the Moravian Express, or the Total Miracle Body Bath, or anything else in Wanted. Like Night Watch, it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Again, I could have looked all that over if the movie was good fun regardless. But, it’s not. When Wanted isn’t drowning in expository gobbledygook — which is most of the time — it brays at you with idiotic macho posturing. (There’s a reason a Dubya quote came to mind above when writing this — this is a film tailor-made for “windshield cowboys” and tough guy poseurs.) In other words, Wanted is basically Fight Club for the fratboy Nickleback set, without the intellect or sense of irony that made Fincher’s movie one of the best of the ’90’s. Jolie especially does what she can — she’s a star through and through — but she can’t redeem this boring, moronic pile of dren. In other words, folks, Wanted is effing terrible. In the final moments, McAvoy breaks the fourth wall and asks us, “What the f**k have you done lately?” Sadly, I went to see this film.

Fear and Loathing in Bendy-Bulletland.

In the trailer bin, assassin-prodigy James McAvoy foregoes the doldrums of cubicle life for quality time with Angelina Jolie in the new domestic trailer for Timur Bekmambetov’s Wanted, a.k.a. this summer’s big dumb Matrix-y action flick (and, mind you, I don’t mean that perjoratively in the slightest.) And director Alex Gibney of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Taxi to the Dark Side takes on the Good Doctor in the new trailer for Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson. Not sure if the latter will make it to this area, but I’m looking forward to it.

Grow Young or Die Trying.

As seen in front of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (twice), Brad Pitt goes back in time in the trailer for David Fincher’s Curious Case of Benjamin Button, from the story by F. Scott Fitzgerald and also featuring Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Taraji P. Henson, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas and Julia Ormond. (Until it officially is released, this is the Spanish-language version.) Looks intriguing…and is it just me, or is it exceedingly strange to see Swinton and Blanchett in the same film?

Also in today’s trailer bin: Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino look for two full hours of that Heat magic in the second preview for Jon Avnet’s Righteous Kill, also starring Carla Gugino, John Leguizamo, 50 Cent, Brian Dennehy, and Donnie Wahlberg. (I’m not sold yet, even if Inside Man‘s Russell Gewirtz is the scribe.) And, over in former Soviet Union, the new international, R-rated trailer for Timur Bekmambetov’s Wanted pops up on the grid, with James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Common, Terrence Stamp, and Thomas Kretschmann. Definitely maybe…although Night Watch had a good preview too.

Update: I neglected to post this one the other day: Uptown girl Nicole Kidman and cowboy Hugh Jackman find love during World War II in the trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s historical epic Australia. Not really my cup of tea, but you never know.

Drawn into Grendel’s Den.

“I am the ripper, the terror, the slasher. I am the teeth in the darkness! The talons in the night! My name is strength! And lust! And power! I AM BEOWULF!” Well, ok then. If Zack Snyder’s 300 last spring only whetted your appetite for cartoonish sword-and-sandal epics featuring hyperstylized gore and naked men bellowing, you’re in luck. For now arises Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf, a rousing 3-D mo-capped glimpse into the future of filmmaking and the ancient past of storytelling. To be honest, it’s harder than usual for me to judge Beowulf on its own terms, since this was my first feature-length IMAX-3D experience (notwithstanding documentaries like Aliens of the Deep), so I can’t say if it’d have the same effect at your regular 2D cineplex. But, in three dimensions, Beowulf is pretty darned impressive, what with arrows, swords, and viking viscera flying in all directions…We’ve come a long way from Captain Eo. And, while the film is basically a pretty standard three-act summer action movie, I’ll give it points for daring to be both more bloody and more downbeat than your average animated fare. If you see one movie this Thanksgiving holiday, see No Country for Old Men…but, if you’re in the mood for it, Beowulf is well worth a look-see as well.

In late 5th century Scandinavia, as rumors of a new god, Christ Jesus, leak out of lands to the South, the Danes under the dissolute King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) and his lovely Queen Wealthow (Robin Wright Penn) are just looking to have a good time. This they proceed to do in the manner of ancient peoples and Ren Faires immemorial, with ribald songs and lusty wenches, meat straight off the bone, and more mead than you can shake a spear at. But interrupting these hearty proceedings is an uninvited guest, an oozing, decaying nearby troll known as Grendel (Crispin Glover), who proceeds to wreck the mead hall, tear Danes limb from limb, and otherwise bring the party down. Seeking respite from Grendel’s gory visitations, King Hrothgar and his people need a Hero. They find one in the traveling Geat warrior Beowulf (Ray Winstone), who arrives via ship with his loyal lieutenant Wiglaf (Brendan Gleeson) and a band of battle-tested scoundrels, all seeking honor and glory. Beowulf is tough, Beowulf is fearless, Beowulf is…a bit of a braggart, as deduced by one of the local noblemen (John Malkovich). But that’s beside the point, as, having enlisted under Hrothgar’s standard, mighty Beowulf must now confront the demon Grendel whether he likes it or not…as well as his more powerful, more alluring mother (Angelina Jolie), who has certain feminine wiles in her arsenal that our Hero may find harder to resist.

If you read, or were forced to read, Beowulf back in school days, you’ll quickly find that screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary have changed the story considerably — They’ve made it bawdier, they’ve completely rewritten the second and third acts, and they’ve emphasized the human fallibility of the characters rather than their epic heroism. (While I’m sure this is anathema to many, none of this bothered me very much, as I’ve actually never read Beowulf before…sad, I know.) Still, for what’s here, Beowulf works decently well, although a Faustian bargain is made at one point that doesn’t seem nearly as tragic and horrible as it’s made out to be. (Sure, regrets he’s had a few, but Beowulf seems to do pretty well by the deal, and you could argue he’s only undone once it is inadvertently broken, rather than as a consequence of consummating it in the first place.)

All that being said, in most eyes Beowulf is less likely to be judged for its capturing the nuances of the ancient poem than it is for its motion-capture, and here’s it’s going to be up to one’s personal aesthetics. Some reviewers are completely creeped out by the effect, but it didn’t bother me much at all. (The 3-D assuredly helped.) Sure, there were a few establishing shots — the viking ship, horses crossing a bridge — that screamed World of Warcraft cutscene, and the men, with their chiseled features and facial hair, still look more realistic than the women, whose faces often lack as much definition. But, all in all, I was rather impressed by the quality of the animation. And, besides, it’s animation — it was more important to me that Beowulf and Grendel seem part of the same world than that Beowulf looked exactly like someone I’d see at the deli. (And if this is what it takes to see Ray Winstone and Brendan Gleeson as the two leads in a buddy picture, so be it, although it still might be more fun to see them face off in a Sexy Beast II.)

So, yes, Beowulf is more a cartoonish action flick (see below) than a somber and faithful retelling of the epic poem. But, as far as cartoonish action flicks go, I thought it was pretty entertaining. (And if you have an IMAX 3-D theater near you, it’s pretty much a must-see.) And, while admittedly it may achieve nothing close to the heights of the original poem, I still admired the general sense of dread and melancholy at work through much of Beowulf. Even the greatest heroes in our canon, it seems, often have a failing for beauty and proud words.

Update: If you’re a first-time visitor arriving via The House Next Door today, welcome! (And, happy thanksgiving.) This way to the site’s front page, and down the hall on your left is the movie review archive. And, sorry, the turkey isn’t ready yet (unless you mean Southland Tales.)