‘Clash of the Titans’ review

I never particularly liked sword-and-sandals movies. Films like “Gladiator” and “Troy” just aren’t my kind of thing: The violence is rampant, the dialogue is blunt, and the characters are often dull and uninteresting. Louis Leterrier’s latest offering, “Clash of the Titans”, fits squarely into this particular category. I walked in with an open mind, ready to experience dumb fun. But “Clash of the Titans” is so drowned in action and masculinity that it has something of a numbing effect.

The plot never really matters in films like these and especially in this one: The filmmakers display a blatant disregard for logic and coherence, shilling anything that makes sense for the thrill of a “Wow, cool!” moment. Unfortunately, they also put very little effort into those “Wow, cool!” moments, which results in a movie that you can tell the filmmakers had very little fun making. As a result, we get a film that makes no sense, that is no fun, and that doesn’t even have any action sequences compelling or creative enough to make up for those fatal first two flaws.

The film opens in a world where the gods depend on humans’ love for them for energy and motivation, yet the humans insist they wield enough power to be essentially gods themselves. Essentially, the rest of the movie is the gods putting the humans in their place, and one man named Perseus whose demi-god status may save the human race.

Sam Worthington, the guy who has starred in “Terminator Salvation” and “Avatar” plays the main character Perseus, but plays him as an uninteresting person whose sole purpose seems to be slaughtering and fighting. The film even finds a way to waste two amazing actors: Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes, whom both appeared in “Schindler’s List” together, play gods turned against each other, and it’s completely obvious they starred in this film for the money: They’re both horrible. Hidden beneath manes of facial hair, they each turn in wooden performances that are only forgiven by me due to their brevity.

The visual effects in the film are somewhat…uninteresting. Skillful, yes, yet there is no real “wow” factor that films such as “Avatar” wield. The action too is really un-imaginative and maudlin. And one somewhat trivial thing that really bugged me about the film: The dialogue is horrible, yes, but the script is written by Lawrence Kasdan! To those whom don’t know (I imagine none of you immediately do) this guy wrote “Empire Strikes Back” and “The Big Chill”: What is he doing writing crap like this?

The bottom line is that “Clash of the Titans” is a horrible film. The dialogue sucks, the action is boring, and it’s painfully obvious that no one making this film really cared if it was a good product they were making.

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