Los Angeles City Beat Review

Beowulf & Grendel

Los Angeles City Beat

July 27,2006




When Danish King Hrothgar (Stellan Skarsgård) builds a new “great hall,” his people are repeatedly attacked by the vengeful, seemingly invincible giant Grendel (Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson). The warrior Beowulf (Gerard Butler, best known for Phantom of the Opera) arrives with his men from Geatland to help eradicate the beast, but not without pausing to pitch some woo to local witch Selma (Sarah Polley), who seems just a little too knowledgeable about Grendel’s ways.
Beating Robert Zemeckis’s megabucks version of the oldest extended narrative in English into theaters by a year, this 2005 Canadian/British/Icelandic coproduction from director Sturla Gunnarsson (born Icelandic, based in Canada) cleanses the old story of any supernatural possibilities: Grendel is not so much a monster as some kind of genetic freak. Most of the approach is realistic: The “great hall” is a wooden structure not much bigger than my apartment; nearly all the characters appear not to have shaved or bathed in eons; and the use of some epithets – criticized in some reviews as being unauthentically modern – seems utterly credible. (I don’t think deriding someone as a “prick” is a new concept.) The one horrible exception to the “no grooming” rule is Polley, who wears lipstick, has flawless skin and hair, and is woefully miscast. Appearing to have wandered in from a different film and probably a different century, the usually excellent actress is simply terrible here, speaking in a flat Canadian accent, while all the others sound Scottish/North English. (Andy Klein) (Landmark’s Westside Pavilion)

http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4088&IssueNum=164