Movie Review--Hercules (2014) [Extended Cut]

 "My father is most unfortunate.  He battles a warlord, Rhesus.  Our land is torn by civil war.  Every day, villages are destroyed, crops ruined, innocents slaughtered."

--Ergenia, Hercules

"You know how a rumor spreads.  How a legend grows.  Hercules' deeds were so incredible, they could not possibly have been performed by a mere mortal.  So we played along."
--Autolycus, Hercules


Hercules is far more intelligently crafted than a film of this name starring Dwayne Johnson as the legendary son of Zeus might sound at first.  Not only are the acting, (general) writing, and storytelling actually of high quality, but Hercules is about how a large and powerful but still very seemingly human warrior and his followers exaggerate his origins, hoping to profit from his reputation, which makes for a very unique approach to the story of the famous demigod.  An ensemble of excellent cast members that includes Rebecca Ferguson, Ian McShane, and John Hurt certainly helps, though there are plenty of characters that receive almost no attention, such as the characters played by then-current/eventual SI Swimsuit and Victoria's Secret models Irina Shayk and Barbara Palvin in their simultaneous film debuts.  It also helps that the creators did not shy away from actually utilizing the PG-13 rating by adding things like blood while never indulging in superficial mistakes like trying make the movie dark simply for the sake of making it dark.  If only more modern films would avoid one of these errors of the other!

Production Values

The CGI on display is not always the best, but anyone expecting an onslaught of creatures from Greek mythology would find that there is very little of that kind of need for CGI here.  The handful of battles and other action sequences of Hercules are shot and choreographed well despite not needing to feature extensive creatures from ancient Greek tales.  For most of the movie, characters drive the scenes, and this is one of the better performances Dwayne Johnson has ever given.  He shows more versatility as an actor here than he does in most of his other works from the past 10 years despite still having a role where he relies on his physicality.  As he needed to in a film like this, he gets plenty of screen time, and thematically relevant revelations about his character and backstory are given up to almost the very end of the movie.

Less dramatic revelations are there for his fellow warriors Atalanta the Amazon, played by Ingrid Bolso Berdal, and the seer Amphiaraus, played by Ian McShane, among other characters, all but one receiving some vital character development or at least enough time to reveal their core histories and personalities.  The very talented Rebecca Ferguson (she was amazing in Doctor Sleep), John Hurt, and Joseph Fiennes also get the chance to both show their skill and bring secret motivations to light.  It is the other characters past this that tend to suffer.  Barbara Palvin, one of the two models who first acted in this movie, only has one scene that I noticed, and merely her head is scarcely visible in the foreground for a brief shot; the other SI Swimsuit model Irina Shayk is onscreen for less than a minute or two combined and barely speaks.  Thankfully, this is not the fate of the characters that make up the circle of friends Hercules has acquired over the years.  The characters who do get more time to unveil themselves do so in a way that naturally contributes to the ideas the story tackles.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Legends about the feats and seeming invincibility of Hercules compel Ergenia, the daughter of a king whose region faces destruction by the vicious Rhesus, to seek him out.  Hercules travels with a small group of warriors and a storyteller that represent the Amazons and various city-states of Greece, like Sparta and Athens.  With his immense size and an even larger reputation, Hercules accepts the task of protecting the kingdom for mercenary pay, as in truth he has allowed this false reputation to spread as a way to generate income for him and his companions.  Rhesus, however, is said to be a centaur sorcerer whose own reputation threatens the dismissal of some who have learned of the embellishments about Hercules himself.

Intellectual Content

This is about as complicated and yet still benevolent a Hercules as one could find in cinema, far more emotionally and philosophically complex than the straightforward person of strength many people think of the demigod as but never as malevolent in his strength as the Hercules from the video game God of War III.  Even his willingness to exploit the assumptions and exaggerations of others for money never comes with any evidence of desire to belittle them.  He does not even always outright lie to people, such as when he tells Lord Cotys that his reputation depends on part on his band of followers--he just literally meant that his very exaggerated reputation as a demigod rather than an incredibly strong human would not would not exist without them, not that they are aids to an actual son of Zeus--though one of his companions is openly agnostic about whether he truly is the son of an Olympian.  At the very least, this group of mercenaries still talks like they believe in the Olympian pseudo-deities or find their existence probable despite no direct evidence that they are present.  One of them is even said to be Amazon as others comment on her combat ability.

Regardless of the veracity of the Olympian stories in this world--and the Olympians could neither be proven to exist by ordinary humans because they do not exist by necessity like the uncaused cause nor disproven because they are indeed logically possible beings--Hercules only seeks money in taking advantage of as a means to the end of survival and personal flourishing.  Before a tragedy befell his family, Hercules said, "I only want to be a husband and a father," and another character calls him dangerous precisely because he does not want power and money for their own sake, as money will not persuade him to do that which he thinks is unjust.  That a person who does not seek political and social ambition might be immune to even the desire for bribery is actually a far more pivotal aspect of the story than might initially seem to be the case, and the ultimate villains are rather realistic in light of this in a movie where it is not a rogue or malevolent Olympian who is the antagonist, but a person just as mortal as Hercules.

Conclusion

Hercules is an excellent movie that makes its fitting PG-13 rating, which is neither too restrictive nor too casual, its superb cast, the originality of the story, and its exploration of legends work in its favor.  Brilliantly pulling from elements of the Greek myths about Hercules only to invert many of them, this is unlike any other movie about Hercules I have seen or heard of.  If it was not for some of the sidelined characters, the sometimes weak CGI, and the very occasional subpar line, this would actually be a almost perfect movie for what it needed to be.  Films about ancient Greece like 300 and Troy are better than Hercules only because of factors like their deeper characterization across the main cast.  All three actually have very clever philosophical themes that draw from ideas associated with ancient Greece even if the characters themselves might say things that are epistemologically unverifiable or false by logical necessity.  For Hercules to be closer in some ways to resembling them than not is an accomplishment some might not at all expect from a Dwayne Johnson-led movie about the classical demigod.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  There is actually blood in the fights drawn with every blow that would likely draw blood in real life, not to mention shots that dwell on events like a vulture eating from a severed head propped up as a warning.

 2.  Profanity:  Words like "shit" and "fucking" are rarely used.

 3.  Nudity:  Megara is very briefly seen (literally for less than a moment or two) from behind as she drops transparent cloth and more directly exposes her nude body, buttocks visible.