Before you get too excited, let's just get this out of the way: no, The Legend of Hercules is not the Kevin Sorbo comeback vehicle we've all been waiting for.
Instead, this is a $70mil action-adventure picture that looks appallingly cheap. It makes old YouTube clips of Xena: Warrior Princess look like Avatar. It makes the recent, baffling 47 Ronin look like a Terrence Malick film. The special effects chosen to be put on display - in the thing that's supposed to make you want to see the movie - look about as elegant as that old flying toasters screensaver from the '90s.
Luckily, we've got one hell of a beefcake around to carry this quickly approaching flop on his broad shoulders. That beefcake? Some guy named Kellan Lutz (from the Twilight movies, evidently) who, tellingly, is never shown uttering one single line of dialogue. One assumes this is because the very idea of that meathead face forming a syllable is too much for modern audiences to take. Seeing him speak would be like those old-timey audiences ducking at the sight of that on-coming movie train.
Even in the movie mass grave that is January, this is an astonishingly shabby-looking product, including many scenes designed to rip off and gain credibility from 300. Never have I more yearned for Zack Snyder's involvement in a film. Instead, at the helm, we have Renny Harlin (The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, The Long Kiss Godnight, Deep Blue Sea), that purveyor of batshit action movies that defy classification and confound critical thought.
I think it's safe to say that The Legend of Hercules is destined to be a box office bomb (much like Harlin's own Cutthroat Island, which was long classified as the biggest box office flop of all time) because, I mean, had you heard of it before just now?
But I kind of hope that it finds its audience with bad movie connoisseurs on home video. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished, for a movie that looks this terrible.
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