Cast: Dwayne Johnson, John Hurt, Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell, Aksel Hennie, Peter Mullan, Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Reece Ritchie, Joseph Fiennes and Tobias Santelmann.
Director: Brett Ratner.
This is the second film this year based on Hercules, the son of Zeus. The first being the Kellan Lutz-starrer The Legend of Hercules, which released in mid-January.
But unlike the previous film, director Brett Ratner’s Hercules is a revisionist take on the classic myth, based on Radical Comics’ Hercules: The Thracian Wars by Steve Moore.
The film begins with questioning the audience, “Do you know anything about the son of Zeus?” and it further goes on to explain the myth of the demi-god Hercules and how he overcame the 12 dangerous missions before being accepted as a legend. All this is narrated through a montage that forms a sort of a prologue to the tale.
Then the narration shifts to the Macedonian Coast of Thrace, where we actually encounter Hercules who isn’t the son of Zeus but a mercenary orphan albeit a selfless one, who over the years has engineered his reputation as a demi-god, allowing him to make good of the image he has created of himself. He is there to drive away the pirates who have infested the coast.
Along with him are a loyal band of warriors, and one storyteller. They are; the mystic fortune teller Amphiaraus (Ian McShane), his oldest friend and fellow orphan Autolycus (Rufus Sewell), warrior Tydeus (Aksel Hennie) who suffers from a post traumatic stress disorder, an ace archer Atalanta (Ingrid Bolso Berdal) and his nephew, the storyteller Iolaus (Reece Ritchie).
