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One of my all time favorites.

Don't Believe the Hype

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Since John Gardner's book Grendel fifty years ago, retellings of the story of Beowulf have enjoyed a certain postmodern freedom from the rigidity of the original Anglo-Saxon verse. If Grendel be more man than monster, can the burly hero still boast about his destruction? Would he still want to? Removing the mystique from Grendel (and his people) calls into question the monster's motives, desires, and even rights. If you guard your fairy tales with religious zeal, if you prefer your monsters black-hearted, your heroes righteous as the dawn, then by gods skip Sturla Gunnarsson's recent entry into this dialogue. If you are instead a student of realism, and the possibility of all actions being unjustifiable, of all decisions being the wrong decision, tickles your inner materialist, then you are sure to be rewarded.There is so much talk of Beowulf & Grendel's realistic properties, that one aspect must first be overcome. There is no point where this universe of Danes, Geats, and monsters is intended to be our own. Grendel's people, whose depiction in the film belies the creators' mid-production waffling between a race of yeti or relict Neanderthal, are not human, but humanoid. That is all that it is necessary that they be. Likewise the Danes call them trolls, but there is no intention to conjure up images from Asbjørnsen and Moe. It appears they settled on a strange dimorphism, where the females of the tribe are trunk-legged water-dwellers, and the men three meter-tall land ramblers. This is all, as they say, academic; however, I wonder whether it, along with bizarre calligraphic chapter cards at uneven internals, is evidence of an attempt to shoehorn fairy tale properties for a wider audience.What is realistic is instead the writing, and the limitations and expectations of these brutal, Dark Age characters. These people are frank, superstitious, crude, and violent, but the main achievement is in making them also uncaricatured. They are intelligent but not wise, brave, but not invulnerable. "I p--s the stuff, you know" says Hrothgar (Skarsgård) under-voice to Beowulf (Butler) as the two comment on an increasingly atypical blood-free morning. I'm especially fond of an early scene where Beowulf washes up ashore in Geatland and casually brushes off the minor adventure to a peasant fisherman. "Oh, a hero! Well, don't my s--t stink!" says the peasant. It typifies the period so perfectly - this is 500 CE, long before castles, courts, and chivalry, before class or nationalism. Survival was all, in harsh lands where kings commanded fewer men than a high school basketball coach. For these tribesmen the gods couldn't do what kinship sometimes could, and they would kill what they didn't understand.And this is what prompts our story. Hrothgar killed a troll, for all intents and purposes, and it's child, Grendel, on reaching adulthood sets upon the Danes so thoroughly, the hero sails from Geatland to fulfill a blood oath after hearing the gruesome tale. Soon he begins to suspect he has become involved not in a war over territory or food, but a personal grudge against just one man who is prepared to let his people suffer for his mistakes. "What is a troll?" he asks a tight-lipped Hrothgar.This is not to suggest Beowulf is a modern man. He is open-minded, intelligent, brave, and a natural leader, but there are things hidden even from him. The outcast witch, Selma (Polley) has that honor. A postmodern woman who has learned a few tricks to ensure Hrothgar's men leave her - mostly - alone, she has earned a reputation as a mystic who can foretell the deaths of others. Her victimization has given her the only real wisdom in the film, that there is an honor to Grendel worth more than blood oaths, that binds him to Hrothgar through vengeance and to her out of shame. Beowulf, like Grendel, has to first wrong Selma to gain this understanding. 'What is a troll?' One could well ask, 'what is a hero?' The competing elements of the old gods and Christianity are treated in the film comically, in the form of two priests, one of Odin who is a servant of the king, and one of Christ, whose presence is tolerated because of the Grendel crisis. When Grendel's mother comes seeking vengeance, both are washed away with the rest of hope.The locations are inspired. Filmed in his native Iceland, Gunnarsson marches his cast over shoals and cliffs, places not exactly up to code. I doubt there was any coconut water on set. The wide shots of the landscape are much more than background here, every bit as rugged as when it was first colonized hundreds of years after the Beowulf legend came to be. The horses and much of the cast are Icelandic, which works just fine for dark-age Daneland. The accents, however, are overall confusing. Most of the Geats use a Scottich brogue, while Selma, the outsider, speaks fluent Canadian. Geats and Danes had a common language, making any differentiation artifactual, and, I think, unwelcome. In the acting department there are no miscasts. It is actually a little refreshing how great everyone is (accents aside). For all that, the film has a cheap sort of look, especially in costume and set design. Heorot would probably fall down if anyone shut the door too hard.Beowulf & Grendel is a quirky, unfaithful historical drama. There is no attempt to include a dragon in the third act, thank gods. Of all the ways this story has been regurgitated, this is perhaps the most experimental, in a way even more distant a retelling than The 13th Warrior (1999), which also replaced myth with men, but without humanizing them. In that film, heroes and villains are still archetypal, whereas in Gunnarsson's, Beowulf struggles with the fact he and Grendel actually have very little to fight about. Arguably, even in the final shots the man just doesn't get it. Neither, it seems, did audiences. 7.5 / 10

In a medieval land is set this blood-soaked tale of a Norse warrior (Gerard Butler)'s battle against the great and murderous troll, Grendel (Ingvar Egger) . In a besieged land , Beowulf must battle against the hideous creature Grendel . As a flesh-eating creature called Grendel is killing off all those who live in the kingdom . That is until the arrival of Beowulf, a mysterious mercenary who offers Hrothgar, the kingdom's ruler, help to hunt Grendel . Out of allegiance to the King Hrothgar (Stellan Skarsgard) , the much respected Lord of the Danes , Beowulf leads a troop of warriors across the sea to rid a village of the marauding monster. The monster, Grendel, is not a creature of mythic powers, but one of flesh and blood - immense flesh and raging blood, driven by a vengeance from being wronged, while Beowulf, a victorious soldier in his own right, has become increasingly troubled by the hero-myth rising up around his exploits carried out along with Hondscioh (Tony Curran) and his warriors . Beowulf's willingness to kill on behalf of Hrothgar wavers when it becomes clear that the King is more responsible for the troll's rampages than was first apparent. As a soldier, Beowulf is unaccustomed to hesitating. His relationship with the mesmerizing whore , Selma (Sarah Polley) who has fallen in love with him, and creates deeper confusion. Swinging his sword at a great, stinking beast is no longer such a simple act. The story is set in barbarous Northern Europe where the reign of the many-gods is giving way to one - the southern invader, Christ , here represented by a Catholic priest (Eddie Marsan) . Beowulf not only does battle with Grendel, he also fights Grendel's evil mother . Vengeance, loyalty and mercy powerfully entwine in this spectacular Norse adventure.This European co-production begins with a real sense of wonder and surprise and develops with continuous struggles and winding up a fight against the giant Grendel. The picture packs great loads of action , wonderful cinematography , abundant stunts , breathtaking combats and a little bit of gore and blood . Stunning battles scenes illuminate the full-blown adventure with a plethora of engaging action set pieces on the combats in which the heads and limbs are slice off here and there and everywhere while other parts of body are slit open . Good performance from Gerard Butler as Beowulf , a man caught between sides in this great shift, his simple code transforming , falling apart before his eyes and the strange witch well played by Sarah Polley. Both of whom play a story of blood and beer and sweat, which strips away the mask of the hero-myth, leaving a raw and tangled tale .Beowulf was a poem written in England, but is set in Scandinavia , commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature .Beowulf is considered an epic poem in that the main character is a hero who travels great distances to prove his strength at impossible odds against supernatural demons and beasts. It has variously been dated to between the 8th and the early 11th centuries. It is an epic poem told in historical perspective; a story of epic events and of great people of a heroic past. Although its author is unknown, its themes and subject matter are rooted in Germanic heroic poetry, in Anglo-Saxon tradition recited and cultivated by Old English poets . The poem is divided between Beowulf's battles with Grendel and with a dragon . The main protagonist, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued by the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands and Grendel's mother with a sword, which giants once used, that Beowulf found in Grendel's mother's lair . Other films based on this epic poem are the following : ¨Beowulf¨(1999) by Graham Baker with Christopher Lambert and Rhona Mitra , ¨The 13º warrior¨ by John McTiernan with Antonio Banderas , Diane Venora , and ¨Beowulf¨ by Robert Zemeckis with Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins .

The scenery is flabbergasting and awe-inspiring. Beautiful mountains and fjords, vertiginous seascape and landscape, little winter and snow. It is not a film about the cold north but the heroic pagan mystery of this northern climes. Pagan with some beings coming from we do not know where, though the troll is explained very clearly from the very start as being the son of a man who was killed in some atrocious way by some Danes, just because he was coming from somewhere else and he "stole" a fish. The son then escapes and survives in nature alone. He becomes a wild child that does not speak any human language and is only looking for his vengeance on the Danish chief who had his father killed and who spared the child's life out of some human feeling. Beowulf is the one who is going to get that "troll", and the story is very close to the English Beowulf, though they try once again to make things look natural, normal. It kills in many ways the meaning and the power of some symbols, and you will never know that Beowulf used a sword from the giants who were on earth before human beings, and that this sword is decorated with runes and interlacing runic tangles. The fact that he has to resort to this sword he finds in the hoard of the mother of this Grendel, some kind of unexplained amphibious monster, appears to be a simple accident, while it is an essential and meaningful element: these monsters are the descendants of the giants that dominated the world before human beings. Some future is told by a witch but she uses bones instead of using the famous runes. The most important addition to this film, as compared to the original story, is this witch who was more or less raped once by Grendel and who got a son from him. Does this element give any humanity to the tale? I do not think so. Does it emphasizes the pagan side of the tale? Maybe but we have to say the repetitive christenings are at least counterbalancing this pagan element. The last interesting side of the film is the realistic rendition of the habitat of these northern human beings and that is neither comfortable, nor in anyway clean or well-ordered. It sure is the story of humanity emerging out of old phases of animal or pre-human existence, but this emergence is identified too much with the Christianization of Scandinavia. In one word is a good film of action though it is rather naïve as for the real anthropological or even archaeological dimension of the story, and it is rather too far from the Anglo-Saxon poem to be considered as a fair adaptation of the first part of this poem. We are missing the dragon of the second part and the death of the hero.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID

It's hard to believe that this film is set in 500 CE, after the Roman Empire had transformed most of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East into a vast trading network with a sophisticated literature and widespread underfloor heating. The Nordic barbarians in 'Beowulf & Grendel' barely hang on in a treeless landscape with permanent filthy weather. Their womenfolk play a less prominent role in society than Moslem women, and the men are obsessed with killing. In my opinion, this is a bogus and misleading depiction of Nordic life. It has been shown that Vikings, for example, were gifted farmers who built solid communities. I was brought up in one, Rottingdean in Sussex, England. Rote (redhead), inge (folk), dene (valley). In other words, the valley of the people of the Redhead. The name has lasted for fifteen hundred years, and you don't achieve that by killing everyone and downgrading women. The fact is, that the Vikings traded with Mediterranean countries, reached America, and became the famous Normans who defeated England and built the aristocracy. The gormless wretches in this movie bear no relation IMO. I'm not going to echo those who bemoan the travestying of an ancient bardic text. A commercial movie could hardly do that; the popcorn crowd would stay away in droves. However, I do think that tacking on a sexy 'wtich' (Sarah Polley), who survives by building (interlocking) stone circles and planting things in crevices, is going a bit far, particularly when she has intercourse with Beowulf in the politically-correct 'cowgirl' position. This gesture to the ladies in the audience is destroyed by the foul language used by the barbarians, which rules out the film's use in the English classroom for Beowulf studies, which is a shame. I think Mr. Gersins, the screenwriter, must take responsibility for most of the popcorn rubbish in this production. Perhaps he was a co-investor (with a long list of national film agencies) and hyper-concerned about a return on his cash. Sad, because his modish bad language and sex-interest paradoxically may have wrecked his chances. Worth a viewing, if only for what might have been.