Beowulf

Quite regularly I see the advertisements for a certain movie and think, "I would never go to see that movie on my own but, if a group of my friends was planning to go see it, I could be interested." Beowulf was such a film for me. It was obvious to me that Robert Zemeckis had taken the technological tricks he developed on The Polar Express and applied them to less family oriented material. I figured that could be groovy. I had also read an abridged version of the poem back in high school, having forgotten nearly all details of any consequence even though I remembered enjoying what I read. Those two factors combined to make me relatively interested in this latest film version. It was the combined enthusiasm of my friends RJ, Elizabeth, and Kit, however, that proved necessary for me to want to pay the ever-increasing box office cost of a ticket to see it.

Not only did we go see Beowulf (back on November 26th), we saw it in IMAX 3-D. That was the first time I'd seen any 3-D film and this movie was a good choice for my initial experience with the format. All in all, I give the move 3 out of 4 stars, it's solid but not awesome. Yet the visuals are every bit as spectacular as the TV spots would have you belief. Spear points practically scratch your cornea, blood and bits of viscera nearly splatter in your face, and the climactic battle with the dragon had me smiling like a 5 year-old watching Star Wars for the first time. An IMAX evening ticket in Denver costs a budget-shattering $13.50 so I was grateful that the visual bells and whistles were genuinely impressive.

In short, I enjoyed Beowulf, and I recommend it to those of you who may be feeling ambivalent about the seeing the picture as I had been.

I conclude by quoting the film's obligatory "hero monologue." Beowulf decides to shout this at Grendel just before severing the monster's hand, which gives the speech an aura of Samuel L. Jackson's Ezekiel schtick in Pulp Fiction. If I could ever improv something this manly in the heat of conflict, I would consider myself pretty kick-ass. Here it is:

I am ripper and tearer and slasher and gouger!
I am the teeth in the night,
And the talons in the darkness.
Mine is the strength
And lust
And power.
I...am...BEOWULF!