Beowulf & Grendel

Taking from the epic poem that I must have done in high school at least three different times, this movie tells us of the titanic battle between the monster Grendel, and the hero Beowulf, minus the 'titanic battle' part.  We start this movie watching a troll and his son frolic in the grass only to be hunted down by a Danish king. The son is spared and grows to hate the Danes, so when the same king builds a great mead-hall Grendel (Ingvar Eggert Sigurosson) the troll breaks in and kills everyone. After that is where I stopped understanding what was happening. There's a scene with Beowulf (Gerard Butler), where he's swimming in from a shipwreck and there's a fisherman... I have no idea what is going on, because I can't understand a single word that they are saying.  The rest of the movie is that same. It is disjointed and hard to follow and completely incomprehensible because I can't understand what is being said.

As far as I can tell, Beowulf and twelve of his friends leave Geatland and travel over to help the Danes. They spend the night in the hall, but Grendel doesn't attack. After more nights of the same, Beowulf talks to the local witch Selma (Sarah Polley) who has no accent what so ever and yet I don't understand her either. There's a bunch of scenes between her and Beowulf and they amount to this: Grendel protects her because they had sex and she had his child and Grendel won't attack the Thanes because they have not wronged him.

Not willing to walk away from a fight Beowulf continues to hunt him down and eventfully they find his lair and one of the Thanes smashes Grendel's father's skull and, instead of waiting for him to return, they make their way back to the mead-hall.  That night  Grendel breaks in to the halls and kills the one that broke the skull, who is played by Tony Curran and now I am really pissed. I like Tony Curran and he has died in every single movie I have seen him in minus one. Well two, but that one doesn't count because he comes back to life at the end. Anyway I'm getting sidetracked.

Anyway in the 'battle' Grendel loses his arm and then runs, and his mom kills everyone indiscriminately until she gets it back. She even kills that annoying priest/monk that was absolutely pointless to the movie. Beowulf then goes down and kills her and  spares Grendel and Selma's son.  Selma gets pissed for some reason, but I don't know why. I don't care either, the movie is over.

I hated his movie. It was choppy and slow moving. I didn't understand what was happening most of the time, but it was so bad that I didn't care. There wasn't even much of a battle scene. The least you can do is ignore the plot and pack the movie full of action like other crappy movies. At least make it slightly enjoyable, but I didn't even get that.

Everything about this movie bothered me. Except the location. That was nice, everything else sucked. Even the costumes bothered me; the swords looked way too small. And where was the village?! They had a hall, where was the rest of the village, or the kingdom for that matter? He ruled like twenty people that slept outside on the grass because there were no houses.

I hate to say this but I enjoyed the old English poem I read more than I liked this movie. At least I understood what people where saying in the poem. 

Grade: 4/10