Beowulf

1999
4.1| 1h35m| R| en| More Info
Released: 01 April 1999 Released
Producted By: Capitol Films
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.beowulfmovie.com/
Info

Beowulf is a wanderer who learns about a man-eating creature called Grendel, which comes in the night to devour warriors trapped at the Outpost. The Outpost is ruled by Hrothgar. He has a daughter, whose husband may have been murdered by the Outpost's master of arms.

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Director

Graham Baker

Production Companies

Capitol Films

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Beowulf Audience Reviews

Scanialara You won't be disappointed!
Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies
Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Tweetienator A nice little movie - the Grendel & Beowulf saga embedded in a post-apocalyptic world. As the fearless warrior we get Christopher Lambert who fights against Grendel the beast, who kills after dark one after another the knights of a besieged castle. Inside the castle the killing beast and outside an army who stands at guard to kill everybody who wants to leave the fortress. This is what I call a good B-trash movie. Reminds me a little of the 3rd Evil Dead movie Army of Darkness - but with far less humor.Again, there can be only one - Grendel or Beowulf!
clarktech First, I gave it 5/10 points arbitrarily... I don't honestly know how to rank this film.You know those movies that are so bad they're good, even great? Well, this isn't one of them... This movie is so bad that it's... bad.So why five points? Because it's just a really weird, bad movie that didn't actually leave a bad taste in my mouth afterwards. Yes, I watched it late at night when I couldn't fall asleep, which is the only sane reason to watch this movie. And I've seen some movies that just offended me such that I hated them afterwards, but this movie isn't one of them. This movie DID have some thought and purpose at some point, it's just up to the viewer to figure out when it was, what it was, and what it was supposed to be.The cast and acting is... interesting. Imagine my surprise when I see Mac from Night Court standing atop the 'castle' look out early in the film! What??? And Christopher Lambert apparently turned down Mortal Kombat 2 to do this movie (and had the same Raiden hair still) because the movie at the time had a real low budget of $25M... which was later whittled down to around $3.5M, about enough for the production company to cater the set with Ramen noodles during the shoot. It even has Gotz Otto, who is actually a decent actor, and Rhona Mitra who is an even more decent actress...And Grendel's Mother is a genuine Playboy Playmate! And it shows!!! The movie is filmed on location in Romania... why? Who knows, probably because it was cheap. The scenery is unremarkable at best. Apparently it was not a pleasant place to film at either. The sets aren't bad when you consider they were working with a budget more apt for a weekly TV series episode than an actual feature length film. I think a large portion of the film's budget went towards matches and lighter fluid, as there are an abundance of candles and torches in almost every scene.If only some of that candle money had been spent on the CGI stuffs... which is all horrible. I was in school during that era, and happened to be in a class where we were playing with various 3D art and rendering programs. I think based on that experience, it's safe to say whoever did the CGI in this movie had never actually done so before, and/or hadn't taken the same classes I had, or it may have turned out a little better.The props, specifically the weapons... What can I say? The king carries a non-op chainsaw blade on a stick... and that's par for the course. I get that somehow the viewer is supposed to know in advance that this is a 'post-apocalyptic future', and that the prop guy was shooting for a feeling of weapons constructed of anything that such a people could get their hands on... But why does the castle have electricity for things like the PA system and the Weapon's Master's honing wheel, all the doors make a hissing sound like they're being hermetically sealed (it's a big open drafty castle, mind you), dinner is served in pristine disposable foil serving dishes (probably robbed from the Ramen noodle catering truck), and every dead person gets their own personal, plastic body bag with a zipper on it?!?!? I think I like this film for these reasons, because you know this movie drove the director to drink, at least, and that after the first day of shooting the cast just sort of showed up everyday to shoot the movie, knowing that they were making a turd, but by Gods it was going to be a polished turd if they could help it! I mean seriously, I'm willing to bet that the dinner scenes were real! They shot them at actual meal times, brought the food from the catering truck onto set with them (served in those awesome disposable foil containers) and sat there and read their lines while having dinner with each other. Why not, right? 5/10 points, because it's not a horrible movie that leaves you wanting that hour and a half back from your life, but because it's a horrible movie that leaves you feeling so bad for the cast and crew that you can't help but want to give them something to console them... even if it's just five points in an internet review...
TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews An outpost is continually attacked at night by a beast known as Grendel. One day, Beowulf, a mysterious stranger, shows up and claims he will slay it. That's about it for the similarity to the original poem, by the way. This is set in a post-apocalyptic age, or a revisionist history version of the medieval times(I think the specific term is Steampunk). It is an awesome flick, pure B-movie goodness, and it isn't particularly aspiring to be anything more than that. If that isn't appealing to you, this wasn't made for you. On the production side, it has a nice look to it, with great lighting, distinct designs(those weapons are nifty! And not just the morphy ones that the titular hero produces a seemingly endless supply of... add to that the creature stuff) and genuine atmosphere(in spite of a kickass soundtrack consisting of a mix of rock and techno). It's well-paced and does not overstay its welcome(this is about 83 minutes before the credits... and on that note, guess what the opening titles of this is? Essentially those of Mortal Kombat of '95, they just swapped the text, the iconic background, and put lightning where there used to be fire). The action is great, if it can feel like it's cutting to a stunt double some(and man, is Lambert proud of his ability to do backflips... he does them as much as he possibly can in this), the choreography is well-done and it's exciting. This also gets genuine tension going, and is scary at points. The badassery is through the roof, especially with Christopher, but really, nearly all the males in this are testosterone-fueled stereotypes spouting ridiculous one-liners. The female lead is Rhona Mitra's cleavage, and one can clearly tell why her breasts were cast(I'm not kidding, she shows them every single time she faces the camera in this... in her sheer outfit, she wears the most clothes out of any of the women in this, which is "hardly any"). For the villain, we have a succubus portrayed by a Playmate who looks and behaves exactly like what her day job is(makes sense, no?). The practical FX are well-done, the CGI is reasonable for the time. For both, they don't rely on it excessively, rather they cut back and forth like before cinema could simply stay on a computer-generated visual, and with the anticipated effect - there is build-up to the monster. There is a bunch of strong, bloody, gory violence, disturbing content, nudity and direct sexuality. I recommend this to any fan of cool, dumb, fun entertainment. 7/10
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.