Immortals
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Director: Tarsem Singh
Starring: Henry Cavill, Mickey Roarke, Frida Pinto, Stephen Dorff
Review: 0 stars (of five)
Feed a young boy a steady diet of the worst superhero comics until the age of nine, then lock him in a dark box for fifteen years, occasionally feeding him scraps of rotten meat and having him beaten by bare-chested gay porn actors in gimp masks … then ask that kid to produce a film, maybe something with an ancient Greek flair. The result, I assure you, would be Immortals.
This 100-minute, blood-soaked non sequitur is easily one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. In its pointless, soulless, talentless desire to commit necrophilia against Greek myth, it is not unlike the Clash of the Titans remake. Only, that film is second cousin to Citizen Kane compared to this story-free swill.
You know, to call this incoherent collection of cliches and unexplained, unmotivated occurrences “story free” is understatement. I firmly believe that director Tarsem Singh has active contempt for story, and that the two “writers” simply have no idea what a story is, and wouldn’t have the attention span to listen if you explained it to them. I would also, judging from the behaviors assigned to their characters, assume that the filmmakers have never interacted with actual humans.
The film is a literal orgy of violence, a fetishized love letter to digital blood (and cheap digital backgrounds, unconvincing digital monsters and awful digital 3D effects), and there’s not a minute of it in which the scenery, the acting, the dialogue or the action are the least bit believable. The whole thing looks like the little story clips that bore you between levels of a video game. Oh, except the gold-clad, goofy-hatted gods of Mt. Olympus—they look like a high-school tribute to a Calvin Klein “Obsession” ad.
[Weird digression: In addition to blood splatter and the simultaneous use of slow-mo and fast-forward, the director is obsessed with triple-claw scratches or scars, which pretty much everyone in the movie ends up sporting. Is this some kind of online fetish movement that I'm not aware of?]
Tarsem Singh not only should never be allowed to direct again, he should not be allowed crayons and paper. The pretentious, underwhelming sadomasochistic art direction that he marries to a hamfisted score are stunning signs of a mediocre imagination utterly infatuated with itself. The result is a masturbatory snuff film.
I would venture to say that if you like this movie (unironically, at least), you’re flat-out stupid and tasteless. And if you’re the type to like a bad movie for how bad it is, even then (despite Mickey Rourke’s tooth-and-lobster-claw war helmet) you should be setting your sights higher.
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