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Beowulf & Grendel [Blu-ray]
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Customer Reviews
Rating:  - Worst version on DVD
OMG this is so horrible. Its actually playing right now and I cant even finish watching it. Its a bunch of grown men running around in a field some place dressed in tacky Halloween costumes with piss poor acting! It looks like someone broke out their handy cam and said "lets play Beowulf guys... I wanna be Grendal!" MSRP $20!! I paid $4.99 and still feel screwed.
Rating:  - Wow
Even women would like this movie even with it's raw setting. Gerard Butler is wonderful in this movie.
Rating:  - Well done adaptation of classic to film
Oral poems like Beowulf are extremely difficult to convert to dramatic media (plays, film, etc) because the plot is not arranged how we tend to expect (think boxes in boxes instead of the Freytag's Pyramid). Additionally, oral poems tend to feature flat but mythic characters (the strong Beowulf or the clever Odysseus) rather than rounded human characters we can relate to. For this reason and no other, most Beowulf movies stink.
Not so with this one. The movie adopts a standard superhero-type formula which is to make Grendel the sympathetic character gone bad, and use this to create an altogether human story full of moral questions relating to the value of mercy, justice, and other profound questions. The story is thus immensely satisfying on a deep level.
Additionally, the cinematography is well done and the Icelandic landscape beautifully shot.
There are, of course, some areas which could have been improved. I was not entirely satisfied with the acting and portrayal of the "Selma" character (not found in the original epic). However, the other characters are well portrayed and the rest of the acting is good.
Rating:  - Sci-Fi Movie with an actual Budget for Effects
I see why this had mixed reviews and didn't make it to the American screens, the views of iceland were amazing however.
The storyline plods along though and it makes you end up asking who cares about why Grendel is attacking these people and even less about the "big secret" at the end. Which is obvious if you don't fall asleep mid-way through.
I was asking myself why the Polly actress, couldn't do some type of decent accent while in the movie.
I am assuming she was a friend of the director and it was a free trip to a cool locale like Iceland! (love her in dawn of the dead, fyi!!)
Rating: - Beowulf & Grendel
I have seen both Beowulf productions recently released. Granted I am biased toward Gerard Butler, but I liked this production much better than the animated version. The character of Beowulf in this movie was more humble, more thoughtful, more humane. The characters were stronger and more varied.
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