Staring: Ray Wintone, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Rated: MA15+
Released: 29 November 2007

Those familiar with visual technology and computer graphics will be very excited to hear about the release of ‘Beowulf’.

It starts off by getting you pumped up for action as the village monster ‘Grendel’ is tearing up the meat hall, throwing people from left right and centre and eating them! My first reaction was ‘wow!’. I had no idea that we were given the opportunity to view this in 3D, so I recommend that if you can definitely do it! Beowulf steps into the village with his crew and is offered the chance to broaden his egotistical title by slaying Grendel. Beowulf soon realises that the evil in the village is being caused by Grendel’s mother (Jolie) who offers Beowulf the chance to bear her another son and she will give him the kingdom. Beowulf is given life altering decisions and is soon tempted by the mother, so now he will need to apply his heroic reputation and his infamous battle stories to lead a village.

Zemeckis quotes on the official website “…many of the themes that are in Beowulf were lifted from the Bible – a heroic man’s journey, the fight between good and evil and the price of glory”. This quote sums up the film in a sentence. If you loved Conan times that love by five and that is how much you will most likely enjoy ‘Beowulf’. Of course the animations help but the story itself is interesting and incase you didn’t know, it’s based on a centuries old poem. For those of you who have taken an interest in the poem it is not as clearly written as the film has been made. The film makers needed to read between the lines and guess what might have happened so that they can put the story on the big screen. I believe what they have estimated to have happened could possible be true.

To get the ‘realistic’ yet animated look of the actors, they were required to still perform but with an advanced suit and motion sensors to tracks their life-like movement. Again I didn’t realise how much to an extreme computer graphics were relied on to get this film made. When I saw the villagers at the beginning of the film I thought of ‘Shrek’ and wondered how good this can possibly be if it has been hammered by computer graphics. After getting into the story, it blended well and allowed the use of heavy graphics to exude such violent and graphic scenes which live acting could not have pulled off. Now ladies, if you think this is a guys film you are wrong. The story will capture everyone and if you need an extra incentive, in one of Beowulf’s battle scenes he is in the nude! The all star cast didn’t let us down in fact not much did. I know some might not be impressed by the amount of graphics used but it is definitely different which is always welcome in the movie industry!

Rating 4.5/5