Beowulf

Coincidentally, this post-nuke adaptation of that bane to literature students everywhere could itself have sprung live from the pages of the above-mentioned magazine; it out-metals Heavy Metal. Set on a squalid, unidentifiable frontier somewhere in a triangle bounded by Hong Kong, Iceland, and the Australian outback, it stars gravelly Christopher Lambert as yet another immortal swordsman, this time questing to help the occupants of a cubist Pythonesque castle vanquish a beastly non-corporeal carnivore materialized from their sins. Shot in low light by Alien Nation director Graham Baker* – wisely, to make a rubbery, low-budget Grendel look fairly effective – Beowulf draws inspiration as much from Mad Max and assorted fantasy and gym fu movies (you know, the kind where people think they can escape danger more quickly by doing back handsprings than by simply running away) as from the epic Old English poem. And why not; if Shakespeare’s plays can be transported through time, why not this. In fact, it looks like it could have taken place in a really rundown neighborhood, where the pipes have burst and somebody forgot to pay the electric bill, from Anthony Hopkins’ recent neo-Roman take on Titus Andronicus.

Lambert may be getting a little long in the tooth for this kind of thing, but his voice still sounds pretty cool, and it makes for a funky mix with the accents of British heroine Rhona Mitra (the Lara Croft model, just seen in Get Carter) and former sitcom star Charles Robinson (who played Mac the clerk on “Night Court”!). The whole thing is kind of silly, and expectedly violent (if not exactly gory), but is generally an unexpected treat until Baker trots out the overexposed computer-generated hellion of the finale.

Filmed in Romania, which thanks to cheap labor and desperate economic straits might someday replace Vancouver and Sydney as the favorite locale of penny-pinching filmmakers (as long as they bring their own water), Beowulf is at least noteworthy in that it heralds the latest 80s-cinema revival: sword-and-sorcery. Look for Dungeons and Dragons (which was co-produced by the guy who scripted this) next month, Peter Jackson’s epic take on the Tolkien trilogy in December of 2001, 2002, and 2003, and maybe even a sequel/remake to Conan the Barbarian. C+

*Baker also directed the effective, overlooked 1984 thriller Impulse, which co-starred Greenville’s Amy Stryker Mathena.

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