Since Robert Zemeckis, the director of "Beowulf," publicly recalls problems understanding the original poem back in junior high, because it was written in Old English, nothing about his film translation deserves any credibility. No high school in America - or anywhere else - teaches Old English, to begin with, and since the Ph.D. in English no longer requires much in the way of an education, even few graduate students study that difficult language, now more commonly known as Anglo-Saxon. Whatever the reliability of his memory, the director's dissatisfaction with the poem, the only surviving epic from the Old English period, ultimately inspired him to make the first blockbuster of the holiday season, a very odd choice indeed.

Although the movie follows some of the general outlines of the poem and uses most of the major characters, its creators play fast and loose with a good many elements, which results in a most unusual motion picture. They follow what must now be a trend, employing state of the art digital animation and a process called performance capture to meld real actors and acting with computerized enhancement. The product of that combination, in a film made for normal screens as well as 3-D, creates its own special look, a kind of stylized reality perhaps suitable for the stuff of myth and legend, folklore and fairy tale.

After providing an exact date for the action -507 A.D. - the movie shows the revelry in the Danish King Hrothgar's mead hall, where the king (Anthony Hopkins) encourages his men to eat, drink, and fornicate. An uninvited guest interrupts the feast, however, the gigantic, hideous Grendel, who bursts through the doors, ruins the interior decoration, slaughters and devours a number of men, and wreaks a good deal of havoc all over the place. Grieving for his lost followers and shamed by the triumph of the monster, Hrothgar seals up the hall and resigns himself to reigning over a devastated country under the thrall of Grendel.

In the manner of such tales, a hero arrives, the leader of a band of fighters named Beowulf (Ray Winstone), who promises to rid the land of the monster. A boaster in the great tradition of ancient stories, Beowulf defends himself against the taunts of the weasel Unferth (John Malkovich), recounting his five-day swimming race against another hero, which he lost because he was detained by the need to slay nine sea monsters (his friend Wiglaf mutters that in the last telling it was three). After the usual merrymaking, Beowulf and his men settle down to await the predator, whom the hero promises to fight without arms or armor.

Naturally, Grendel arrives, all hell bursts loose, and Beowulf engages him in hand-to-hand combat, eventually tearing off the monster's arm; weeping and moaning, Grendel retreats to his cave, where he dies in the arms of his mother (Angelina Jolie), who consoles him in Anglo-Saxon. That character represents the most significant departure from the poem, transformed from a ghastly hag to a beautiful, seductive woman, adding the entirely bogus touch that her son is the offspring of a sexual encounter with Hrothgar, turning the whole Anglo-Saxon, pagan/Christian epic into a family romance right out of Sophocles.

In this telling, when Beowulf finds he must also kill the monster's mother, he also succumbs to her allure, which in effect starts the cycle all over again. Though Hrothgar bestows his crown and his queen on Beowulf, the hero must again encounter a monster, the spawn of their encounter, and fight more battles, shed more blood, achieve another victory, and make a final sacrifice.

Aside from the wonders of cinematic technology that enable the creation of monsters, battles, stunts, and supernatural events, the film ultimately works only as a display of its special effects. The digital enhancement transforms most of the actors into something quite different from their usual selves - Ray Winstone was never so buff, Anthony Hopkins never so large, and Robin Wright Penn (the queen) never so voluptuous. The beautiful actress, activist, and child collector Angelina Jolie, on the other hand, looks much like a gilded version of herself, except for the addition of a tentacle and feet with their own stiletto heels. That image alone suggests the exaggeration and perhaps the ultimate silliness of "Beowulf." 

Beowulf

(PG-13), directed by Robert Zemeckis

Now playing