Bill Gibron is a veteran film critic from Tampa, Florida.For director Tarsem Singh, looks are everything. Everything. A movie may have a lousy screenplay and ineffectual characters, but as long as the costumes are immaculate and the production design divine, all is right in the cinematic world. While it wants you to think it's as macho as 300 and filled with as much mythology as Clash of the Titans, Immortals is actually a 100 minute resume reel for one of film's most misguided auteurs. From The Cell to The Fall, Tarsem has avoided the majority of the medium's mandates in order to deliver eye popping visuals and MTV level spectacle...but little else. This take on tale of Theseus, King Hyperion, and the battle between the Gods of Olympus and the long exiled Titans is no different. It has more than enough material for the director to free association on. All the stuff in the middle however, is mindless mediocrity. After witnessing his mother's murder at the hands of King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke), Theseus (Henry Cavill) vows to destroy the despotic monarch. Little does he know that the angry tyrant is planning on finding the legendary Epirus Bow, a weapon that can unleash the legendary Titans from their underground prison. The purpose? To bring about the end of mankind and defeat Gods such as Zeus (Luke Evans) once and for all. Hyperion raids a local monastery to find the virgin oracle Phaedra (Freida Pinto) who knows of the item's location. He eventually captures Theseus as well. With the help of our hero and a thief named Stavros (Stephen Dorff), the seer escapes. She informs Theseus of his destiny and he becomes determined to prevent Hyperion from retrieving the talisman. He also will not rest until the villain is dead. If movies can be judged by sections, at least part of Immortals is gangbusters. Whenever swords clash, whenever our actors duke it out in stellar slow-motion mayhem, the experience is mesmerizing. Borrowing heavily from the new school of slaughter (lots of CG blood spray and body damage) but also avoiding the rapid fire editing that turns fighting into an unwatchable frenzy, Tarsem wows us with his style. From Theseus' failed attempt to save his mother to the last act battle between the Titans and the Gods, the spectacle is beyond belief. It's great. We want more of it and are glad for a last minute hint at the possible heavenly histrionics to come.
But then the actors open their mouths to speak and Immortals becomes crap, a mishmash of bad accents, weird line readings, limp dialogue, and even more mundane emotions. We never once care about Theseus, the beautiful prophetess, or the firebrand fiend known as Hyperion. Their motives are meaningless, cogs in a plot machine that just needs to get us to the next hyperactive beatdown. While they all look the part (who knew Stephen Dorff had such washboard abs?), the actors are given nothing to do except be imagery. While it's easy to blame the script - and quite necessary, in fact - it's actually more of a question of context. Had he found a way to get us invested in this young man's particular quest, we would follow Immortals anywhere. It just looks that good. Sadly, such substance never arrives.
Perhaps a better way of saying it is this - Tarsem Singh is good at eye candy...very good. Unfortunately, the kind of sweet meats he's interested in come from faraway lands and contain ingredients that rub the mainstream moviegoing palate the wrong way. They're not so much an acquired taste as beyond the typical audience's ability to comprehend. On the outside, Immortals is something to behold. On the inside, however, everything is dry and dull.
