Jolie de vivre

Here's what happens in the movie Beowulf: After an attack by the monster Grendel (Crispin Hellion Glover) on King Hrothgar's (Anthony Hopkins) kingdom, the warrior Beowulf (Ray Winstone) and his band of muscle-men come to his aid. As if that's not dangerous enough, family gets involved. Grendel's fierce, sexy mother (Angelina Jolie) seduces Beowulf so she'll have a replacement heir that will allow her to re-establish her dominion over the kingdom. We don't want to give anything away - suffice it to say that at the end of the movie, justice is served. Kind of.

After all, the screenplay is written by Neil Gaiman (The Sandman) and Roger Avary (Killing Zoë) - two guys for whom the word "conventional" has no place in their vocabulary. Still, it's no mean feat converting an epic, 3,183-line, Old English-but-set-in-Scandinavia poem into two hours of action-packed animation, so of course there are dramatic liberties being taken - which purists will no doubt enjoy bemoaning.

For example, in the poem, Beowulf gets ample help from his men, but in the movie, it's all Beowulf. And here's the kicker: Jolie as Grendel's mum is far different from the "hag" described in the poem (And if Jolie is a hag, I'm Brad Pitt). And what about all that fake nudity? I guess when he "fought with his bare hands", he didn't want to over-accessorise.

But let's get back to the what's important in a movie like this: Action and gore, of which there is enough here to warrant an NC-16 rating. Easy on the eye and not taxing on the brain, Beowulf is the kind of movie you can enjoy over and over again. Okay, so we just want to drool over Jolie's naked body - who cares if it's fake?

news source : http://www.channelnewsasia.com/