June 2014

The Legend of Hercules

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Legend of Hercules
  • IMDB: link

The Legend of HerculesEven for a throwaway B-action-flick, The Legend of Hercules is a bad movie that doesn’t even really deliver on its title. Rather than offer a movie centered on the legendary achievements of Hercules, writers Sean Hood, Daniel Giat, Giulio Steve, and Renny Harlin (who also directs) offer audiences a bland origin tale centered around the god-like Prince Alcides (Kellan Lutz) whose father King Amphitryon (Scott Adkins) sends on an impossible mission to get the boy killed guessing correctly that Alcides isn’t his son.

Surviving a slaughter and life as a gladiator, Alicides eventually makes it home under the name Hercules, which Queen Alcmene (Roxanne McKee) wanted to name him, to take on his father, brother (Liam Garrigan), and rescue the woman (Gaia Weiss) he loves all while being told he has a greater destiny to fulfill (which the movie then completely ignores). Cribbing the storyline from Gladiator, without any of its style, The Legend of Hercules is an impressively bad movie that doesn’t even offer cheesy enjoyment in its many faults.

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Samurai Jack #8

/ / Comics

Samurai Jack #8In an issue without dialogue the focus of Samurai Jack #8 becomes the art as Samurai Jack‘s attempt to hide from the noise of the future city leads him to a sleeping pod. Thanks to the maneuvering of his old enemy Aku, Jack awakes in a mirrored cave where his reflection creates distorted doubles of the samurai out for blood.

I like the idea of doing a Samurai Jack storyline without any dialogue, something “Jack Renumbers the Past” put to tremendious use for most of the episode, but a throwaway one-issue adventure doesn’t have the same impact of Jack returning home for the first time.

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Homefront

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Homefront
  • IMDB: link

HomefrontAdapted from Chuck Logan‘s novel of the same name by Sylvester Stallone, Homefront stars Jason Statham as former DEA Agent Phil Broker who moves with his young daughter (Izabela Vidovic) to a small town in the Louisiana Bayou after Broker’s last undercover assignment leaves both the former agent and young Maddy with prices on their heads by a biker gang out for blood.

Better written than many of Statham’s films, Homefront casts Kate Bosworth and Marcus Hester as a quarrelsome couple whose son gets into an altercation at school. Not letting the matter rest the mother enlists the help of her villainous brother (James Franco) which leads to all kinds of hell eventually erupting around the sleepy small town. Playing on basic themes of revenge and an unbeatable but reluctant hero unwilling to be pushed too far, the film works as a very well-trod B-movie action-thriller.

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