Beowulf & Grendel (2005)

An action-packed slog

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Beowulf (Gerard Butler) leads his men across the sea to battle the murderous troll Grendel for King Hrothgar (Stellan Skarsgård). However, Grendel is a real person seeking revenge for past grievances. Beowulf is conflicted. He is also enchanted by Selma the witch (Sarah Polley).This is a modern envisioning of a simple folktale of good versus evil. Its style is one of stark brutality and isolation. This is a good attempt but it falls short in some aspects.It's mud and blood, but it needs more bloody action. It could use somebody more used to shooting blood splattering horror movies. The action is fair stage fighting with some decapitations. It should be much more brutal to match the movie's intentions.The dialog is like bad Shakespeare. The actors try to match the dialog. It mostly feels like a stage play. The director doesn't take full advantage of the cinematography of the vast landscape. The lack of CGI also held it back some. It looks like a movie with more ambition than budget.The biggest aspect of this movie is the reworking of the epic poem. It's trying to inject human nature into a fantasy. It's a terrific idea to try. Not all of it is successful. And it really takes too long to get going. If the movie is about Beowulf & Grendel, they really need to get battling earlier. And they need to get Selma into the story sooner.

In a medieval land is set this blood-soaked tale of a Norse warrior (Gerard Butler)'s battle against the great and murderous troll, Grendel (Ingvar Egger) . In a besieged land , Beowulf must battle against the hideous creature Grendel . As a flesh-eating creature called Grendel is killing off all those who live in the kingdom . That is until the arrival of Beowulf, a mysterious mercenary who offers Hrothgar, the kingdom's ruler, help to hunt Grendel . Out of allegiance to the King Hrothgar (Stellan Skarsgard) , the much respected Lord of the Danes , Beowulf leads a troop of warriors across the sea to rid a village of the marauding monster. The monster, Grendel, is not a creature of mythic powers, but one of flesh and blood - immense flesh and raging blood, driven by a vengeance from being wronged, while Beowulf, a victorious soldier in his own right, has become increasingly troubled by the hero-myth rising up around his exploits carried out along with Hondscioh (Tony Curran) and his warriors . Beowulf's willingness to kill on behalf of Hrothgar wavers when it becomes clear that the King is more responsible for the troll's rampages than was first apparent. As a soldier, Beowulf is unaccustomed to hesitating. His relationship with the mesmerizing whore , Selma (Sarah Polley) who has fallen in love with him, and creates deeper confusion. Swinging his sword at a great, stinking beast is no longer such a simple act. The story is set in barbarous Northern Europe where the reign of the many-gods is giving way to one - the southern invader, Christ , here represented by a Catholic priest (Eddie Marsan) . Beowulf not only does battle with Grendel, he also fights Grendel's evil mother . Vengeance, loyalty and mercy powerfully entwine in this spectacular Norse adventure.This European co-production begins with a real sense of wonder and surprise and develops with continuous struggles and winding up a fight against the giant Grendel. The picture packs great loads of action , wonderful cinematography , abundant stunts , breathtaking combats and a little bit of gore and blood . Stunning battles scenes illuminate the full-blown adventure with a plethora of engaging action set pieces on the combats in which the heads and limbs are slice off here and there and everywhere while other parts of body are slit open . Good performance from Gerard Butler as Beowulf , a man caught between sides in this great shift, his simple code transforming , falling apart before his eyes and the strange witch well played by Sarah Polley. Both of whom play a story of blood and beer and sweat, which strips away the mask of the hero-myth, leaving a raw and tangled tale .Beowulf was a poem written in England, but is set in Scandinavia , commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature .Beowulf is considered an epic poem in that the main character is a hero who travels great distances to prove his strength at impossible odds against supernatural demons and beasts. It has variously been dated to between the 8th and the early 11th centuries. It is an epic poem told in historical perspective; a story of epic events and of great people of a heroic past. Although its author is unknown, its themes and subject matter are rooted in Germanic heroic poetry, in Anglo-Saxon tradition recited and cultivated by Old English poets . The poem is divided between Beowulf's battles with Grendel and with a dragon . The main protagonist, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued by the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands and Grendel's mother with a sword, which giants once used, that Beowulf found in Grendel's mother's lair . Other films based on this epic poem are the following : ¨Beowulf¨(1999) by Graham Baker with Christopher Lambert and Rhona Mitra , ¨The 13º warrior¨ by John McTiernan with Antonio Banderas , Diane Venora , and ¨Beowulf¨ by Robert Zemeckis with Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins .

I stumbled upon this movie at the local video library, and picked it up comparing it to the lamentable Winstone/Jolie CGI version.There's no point in recapping the story -- others on these pages have done that well. It's not Oscar material, though the screenplay, direction and acting are fine enough. It's old-school film-making, and Sturla Gunnarsson should qualify as a Bard just by this movie. But I have to say this is the first movie I've seen that truly qualifies as a Greek tragedy in the classic sense.Hrothgar did not have to kill Grendel's father. Hrothgar could (should?) have killed young Grendel. So he lays out his Doom. None of his subjects has the strength to fix things, so their Doom follows Hrothgar's.Beowulf is young, with the arrogance of youth. He could (should?) have asked a couple of questions. But he learns humility, and some wisdom. This is not an adventure he can boast of on return to Geatland.And we wonder what the future holds for Grendel's son, Selma's boy. And Selma? Will the tragedy continue?Why cannot Hollywood ask these questions? But maybe we do need to shovel tons of gravel to find each diamond. I didn't think of Casablanca until just now: but that's the quality of "Beowulf and Grendel".

The scenery is flabbergasting and awe-inspiring. Beautiful mountains and fjords, vertiginous seascape and landscape, little winter and snow. It is not a film about the cold north but the heroic pagan mystery of this northern climes. Pagan with some beings coming from we do not know where, though the troll is explained very clearly from the very start as being the son of a man who was killed in some atrocious way by some Danes, just because he was coming from somewhere else and he "stole" a fish. The son then escapes and survives in nature alone. He becomes a wild child that does not speak any human language and is only looking for his vengeance on the Danish chief who had his father killed and who spared the child's life out of some human feeling. Beowulf is the one who is going to get that "troll", and the story is very close to the English Beowulf, though they try once again to make things look natural, normal. It kills in many ways the meaning and the power of some symbols, and you will never know that Beowulf used a sword from the giants who were on earth before human beings, and that this sword is decorated with runes and interlacing runic tangles. The fact that he has to resort to this sword he finds in the hoard of the mother of this Grendel, some kind of unexplained amphibious monster, appears to be a simple accident, while it is an essential and meaningful element: these monsters are the descendants of the giants that dominated the world before human beings. Some future is told by a witch but she uses bones instead of using the famous runes. The most important addition to this film, as compared to the original story, is this witch who was more or less raped once by Grendel and who got a son from him. Does this element give any humanity to the tale? I do not think so. Does it emphasizes the pagan side of the tale? Maybe but we have to say the repetitive christenings are at least counterbalancing this pagan element. The last interesting side of the film is the realistic rendition of the habitat of these northern human beings and that is neither comfortable, nor in anyway clean or well-ordered. It sure is the story of humanity emerging out of old phases of animal or pre-human existence, but this emergence is identified too much with the Christianization of Scandinavia. In one word is a good film of action though it is rather naïve as for the real anthropological or even archaeological dimension of the story, and it is rather too far from the Anglo-Saxon poem to be considered as a fair adaptation of the first part of this poem. We are missing the dragon of the second part and the death of the hero.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID