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Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Hercules (2014)

Any time you see an action movie hero as the lead in a movie, you know you are not going to get a historically accurate rendition of a story.  When it comes to Greek myths there is not so much a historical record but rather stories that may or may not have a single source.  That is certainly the case with the myth of Hercules.

So perhaps the movie can be excused for it's inaccuracies.  The thing that Hercules is best known for is the 12 labors that he was more or less sentenced to complete after he murdered his family.  He was a man of enormous strength and a very bad temper, which is a volatile combination--Dwayne Johnson's Hercules is a fierce warrior, but he is also portrayed as having a gentler side.  This gentleness and love is consistent with the mythological Hercules relationship with his third wife Deianera, but not how is is largely thought of.

Hercules travels with his nephew Iolaus and a band of warriors that includes the Amazonian Atalantis and Amphiaraus the Oracle.  Most of them are simpatico with Hercules in many ways, and the main story is about a battle that they come to regret and then endeavor to fix.  Not a deep movie, but my son who is a Classics major and an action movie fan enjoyed.  Lots of violence so not for child consumption.

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