Cash of the Titans

What do you do when you are a part of the movie making industry and have no original ideas at all? You remake an old movie! (I'm just waiting for the day when remakes are only a year apart...) Strangely enough, I think I've actually seen the original (Peter, was this one of the movies you screened for us?). Certainly the call back to the original made me smile.

The basic plot, and it is basic, is that the gods decide to destroy an entire city because the queen said 'my daughter is beautiful'... and the queen was killed. I believe some sort of plea could be made that the presumption was just by one person who had paid for it, but it seems that the gods' wrath doesn't care about technicalities. The city decides that their best option is to someone who just arrived in town, who proceeds to lead a group of men to their deaths because he is a hero (as per the definition).

There is a lot of walking in this movie. And a lot of talking. You know what there isn't much of? Action. You'd think this was an action movie, certainly the trailer aids that conclusion, and yet the action moments are brief and scattered sparsely throughout the film. Whilst not boring, it does drag the movie out making it seem a lot longer that its 95 minutes runtime. (That Readings lists 110 says a lot about the credit sequence, and the ads they run before hand.)

A lot of big names are associated with this: Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes (didn't recognise behind his make up), Jason Flemyng (ditto)... and some guy named Sam Worthington that hasn't been in any movie worth noticing, and is trying to (badly) sound like Ray Winstone. You can't say it's trading on the big names due to the aforementioned make up hiding them, although I'm sure they're hoping the names help. (Although I think they should have cast Lucy Lawless as Medusa...)

After watching all that... to be honest... go watch the original...

[END]