A big, bad 'Beowulf'

'Beowulf.' Epic tale of a warrior's battles with demons and dragons. With Ray Winstone, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins. Director: Robert Zemeckis (1:54). PG-13: Violence, sexuality/nudity. Area theaters.

English lit professors and students who suffered migraines studying the motifs, themes and symbolism of the anonymously written Old English poem "Beowulf" may not cotton to the movie adaptation directed by Robert Zemeckis. But action fans can't complain.

Shot in a much-improved version of the performance-capture process Zemeckis used for "The Polar Express" (2004), and being released in conventional, 3-D and IMAX 3-D formats, "Beowulf" is as dazzling a feast for the eyes as the hungriest eyes can take.

It is as bloody and violent as it needs to be to capture the essence of its Dark Ages source, and the monsters that the heroic warrior Beowulf must kill are spectacular computer-animated creations. The climactic battle between Beowulf and a napalm-breathing golden dragon will suck the air out of your lungs - at least if you're sitting in front of an IMAX screen, as I was.

Though others have attempted to adapt "Beowulf" on film, its split structure - Beowulf fights the man-eating demon Grendel and his vengeful mother as a young man and the dragon decades later in another land - has deemed it "unfilmable." The script here overcomes the split by taking dramatic leaps that weld the sections together.

Instead of killing Grendel's mother - a wretched swamp hag in the poem, a naked, gold-plated Angelina Jolie in the movie - Beowulf (voice of Ray Winstone, channeling Richard Burton) is seduced and corrupted by her. In exchange for her promises of his own kingdom, he fathers another son for her, and that son will become his curse - the dragon he must eventually fight to the death.

Despite the story's new bridge, there's still no middle to it. After Beowulf is compromised and inherits the kingdom from Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins), we simply fast-forward a few decades, barely alluding to the guilt that has estranged the hero from his queen (Robin Wright Penn), also inherited from Hrothgar.

An even greater problem is that while the performance-capture process gives "Beowulf's" world a mythic quality, it drains the characters of nuance. The movie may be three-dimensional, but the people in it are not.

For those Beowulf scholars already groaning out there, there's even worse news: The movie sets up a sequel.

Source: nydailynews.com