17.05.12

Immortals is by far the best-looking worst movie since 300, the sword-and-sandals epic it most resembles. Both look as if any scene could have been taken from the side of a 1970s panel van, where glistening warriors hold a broadsword in one hand and a chain to a black panther or a big-breasted Amazonian woman in the other. If they are the images of immature male fantasies, Immortals is the 3-D movie.

It's not surprising to learn it's from the producers of 300, that amusingly homoerotic action-porn where hulking beefcakes sport airbrushed six-packs and glints in their eyes. Like that film, Immortals is made almost entirely in the computer world, with flesh-and-blood actors performing to green screens and providing its only animate objects. Or in the case of Mickey Rourke, not so animate, with his bulky steroid-abused body and plastic surgery- battered face.

Immortals has less blatant homoeroticism than 300 and is more Greek-myth fantasy-epic. But it's no less silly and just as airbrushed. Tanned, sweaty men wear metal armour and leather skirts and gorgeous women barely wear flowing robes. It's not so much a story as a series of gobsmacking images filled with pretty actors. Early on, we see a granite prison hidden under a mountain that hides the imprisoned Titans. Greek villages with spectacular temples and thrones are carved from the sides of steep cliffs. The Oracles look flash in flowing red robes against a slate background. The colours are rich, warm and earthy.

Source: The West Australian