First Wave Of Reviews For Brett Ratner's HERCULES Hit - And They're Positive!

Hercules is unabashedly a B-movie, with its faintly camp tone appearing to hark back to the Italian Hercules movies from the 1950s onwards, which starred such muscle-bound legends as Steve Reeves, Alan Steel and Lou Ferrigno. Some cinemagoers might find all this a bit quaint, but the sense of fun, plus an always-charismatic Dwayne Johnson screaming from beneath his lion hat, makes Hercules well worth the price of a cinema ticket. [***]

The surprising thing is that Johnson himself is the dourest of this lot, having to suffer throughout those ever-inevitable inner demons. It’s a shame we’re not seeing him do the loud, braggart version of Hercules who was so much fun in Jason And The Argonauts. Still, Ratner’s a savvy enough showman to gift him a few brilliant zingers. Our favourite? “[frick]ing centaurs.” Pushing the 12A rating as far as it can, this is brisk, brutal, silly (in a good way) pulp entertainment, whose clunky exposition and continuity errors can be easily forgiven. Harder to swallow is the way it lets its own central conceit down during a blandly OTT and muscle-headed final blast. With Hercules, Brett Ratner and Dwayne Johnson are out to entertain you — no more, no less. And that is just what they do. 

He is Hercules: hear him roar. Pec-oil supplies plummet as the great muscly hero of classical antiquity arrives on the big screen, played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, in glistening semi-nudity. Brett Ratner's cheerfully ridiculous and entertaining film begins by saying that he is "the son of Zeus – the Zeus!" That's in case there's any confusion and someone blunders up to our hero mid-battle, and says how much they enjoyed his dad's masterpiece The Cat in the Hat. [***]

It just seems that Ratner is enjoying himself more with his latest endeavour, as a film that while incredibly flawed in parts, is improved significantly by the cast of talented performers, taking a generic tale, and bringing it to life. To have the likes of Peter Mullan, Aksel Hennie and Ian McShane joining Johnson and Hurt can make all the difference, and help to create a picture that is easy to indulge in, and enjoy. [***]

Actors playing Hercules have been a varied bunch to say the least – from the aforementioned earnest Reeves and his acceptable contemporary Reg Park, to the unmentionable Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno. But The Rock has enough acting chops to match the necessary musclebound physique, and his reading of the mere mortal struggling to live up to his own lore in the volatile ancient world is about as good as it can get for this type of picture. It's utter tosh, but impossible not to enjoy. [***]

Given that its director is the widely derided Brett Ratner (‘Rush Hour’, ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’), it’s no great surprise that ‘Hercules’ is a complete mess: the plot barely hangs together, the characters are meagrely sketched and the 3D digital effects are plasticky, indistinct and wearying to look at. The script contains a handful of decent comic asides and there’s one great mid-battle moment where Herc throws a horse, but on the whole this is decidedly non-legendary. [**]

By the beard of Zeus! Brett Ratner delivers fast, fun thrills to score a sound victory over Renny Harlin’s laborious The Legend Of Hercules. [***]