Vincent Black This movie has nothing to do with the epic Nordic tale of Beowulf and even less about making good movies. The tale is some kind of hash tossed together with a steampunk sci-fi plot using the names and plot frame from the Beowulf tale. It not only rips bits and pieces from movies like "Highlander" and "Mortal Kombat" but stars Christopher Lambert from both those movies. It was like they wrote parts of the movie after they casted the role of Beowulf. I can almost hear the producer telling the writer, "Hey, we scored Christopher Lambert for the lead. Write in some Mortal Kombat and Highlander lines and clichés!". Ugh, not that it helped or hurt this stinker which I only give 2 stars for Grendel's Mom. Who is basically a babe from Bay Watch and Playboy. This is a good guy movie or something stupid to toss on during a party and you know everyone is going to ignore it.

dbborroughs This will be brief because there isn't much to say...Post Apocalyptic retelling of the story stars Christopher Lambert as our hero. Good but low budget action sequence of Lambert rescuing a maiden from a mob opens the film and if you take it for what it is its not bad. The movie soon moves into a castle fortress where any action- mostly coming from interpersonal conflicts- winds down and we have a very talky increasingly dull film.I know that this film is hated by many people and after watching it on Monster the other day I can understand why. The film, after a reasonably beginning just falls off the table (hell its so memorable that I had to see a reference to the new version to remember I saw this old one). The good will of the first half hour is lost by the end of the second and odds are after that you'll be turning this off to find something else. To be honest I got an hour plus into this thing and found I had turned the channel to see what else was on. When I realized that I wanted to see how it ended I found that I had turned back after the movie had ended. Clearly not a ringing endorsement.At best a movie to have on in the background. At worst a snoozer

Casper Jansen The film with Christopher Lambert as Beowulf is even a "love it" or "hate it" film. So I'm going to place myself between those two, just for being opposing. But the truth is that I actually enjoyed the film for what it was. Christopher Lambert has never been a favourite actor of mine, mostly because of his trying-to-be-cool look, which I never have been able to take serious. And his role as Beowulf is not helping on my opinion about this, and he even has white hair...'Beowulf' is based on the ancient legend by the same name, which is about the hero Beowulf coming to the land of Danes (Yahoo!) to fight evil. It is written in ancient English in the year 1.100, and now comes the movie.So, if you are able to summon lot of bad acting, smart action, bad one-liners, distorted rock music and cheesy special effects, you have an action movie - with Chrisopher Lambert. But 'Beowulf' ends up being a mostly enjoyable film anyway ,looking very 80'-ish and having a lot of unintentionally funny moments.This film is, if anything, perfect at a DVD night with the guys.

DonJohn80 This was my first exposure to Beowulf, so I didn't find my views of the film coloured by the closeness (or lack thereof) of the plot or anything of that sort. Just had to point that out since I find peoples reviews of adaptations are usually heavily based on source material. First thing I want to point out is that the "futuristic setting" barely comes into play. If you're expecting a big sci-fi film, or avoiding the film because of the sci-fi you should know that the only real futuristic elements are a high tech telescope, a castle that doesn't even look like anything, and the pizza cutter of doom wielded by one of the extras. I suppose the soundtrack gives it a sci-fi type feel, since it makes use of a lot of techno. Unfortunately I found the soundtrack quite uneven. Some of it was good and suited to the scene, some of it was so bad I turned on subtitles and muted my TV. Most of the soundtrack just had me thinking "do I know this song or did they just rip off a song I know?" The music wasn't the only uneven thing though, some of the acting in this film was atrocious. Lambert manages to keep his wry charm, Rhona Mitra was quite impressive, and Layla Roberts was good at what little she had to work with. Everyone else ran the spectrum from mediocre (the king... was he a king... I was kinda lost on that) to something that looked like the role was filled by the first hobo they could find (the assistant weapons master). Fight choreography was sadly lacking, so don't expect an awesome action flick. The monsters were kind of lame, so don't count on oohing and aahing at the effects. In truth, this film had the potential to be very great as a bad film but the few descent actors and good bits to the soundtrack raised the bar so it was mostly just bad. Personally, I like Christopher Lambert and I like bad movies, so I liked it... just not as much as I could have with a bit of tweaking.