Director Brett Ratner
Starring Dwayne Johnson, John Hurt, Ian McShane
Rated M
Score 3/6

Having endured his legendary twelve labors, Hercules, the Greek demigod, has his life as a sword-for-hire tested when the King of Thrace and his daughter seek his aid in defeating a tyrannical warlord.

After recently watching The Legend of Hercules starring Kellan Lutz, I have to admit that I went into the cinema with high expectations, I might have gone into the cinema with an expectation level that this movie with this cast and crew was unable to meet. For those of you who are interested this was based on the graphic novel Hercules: The Thracian Wars by Steve Moore. Brett Ratner is not one of my favourite directors I feel that he lacks what could be considered a consistent quality level with his movies. However, with Hercules he delivered some stunning scenery and offered up a lead actor Dwayne Johnson who was better suited for the role physically and was actually capable of generating a level of emotion that the audience is actually capable of feeling in key scenes. I would not consider myself as being overly familiar with the Labours of Hercules but I really would have liked to seen more attention being paid to the Labours, this might have been achieved if the movie had an extra thirty minutes. Though it does raise the great question of the man vs. legend and which is more important.
Fans of sword and sandal action movies could be a little disappointed with the action movies it was almost as if the stunt coordinators took a page out of the 1962 The 300 Spartans’ playbook. It was good to see the legendary John Hurt playing the villain of the movie Lord Cotys, though I really would have liked to have seen his character dealt with in any other way then the clichéd death that he received.

For the purposes of honesty I’ll admit it, but after seeing model turned actress Irina Shayk (who made her acting debut in Hercules as Megara) give an interview on The Craig Ferguson Show I would have loved it if she had a larger role.