Beowulf (Robert Zemeckis, 2007)

With the budget at hand to finally do justice to the superheroic aspects of one of the earliest surviving Old English quest epics, it's a crying shame that its director had no intentions of linguistic authenticity or adherence to the original poem, making an action cartoon of it all instead. Admittedly, subtitled Anglo-Saxon would be quite a hurdle in terms of box-office appeal, but without the rolling alliterative rhythms of the poetry all that the story has in essence is a man slaying some beasties, and no amount of CGI and superimposition of modern baggage such as marital infidelity, making the monster pitiable or even giving the protagonist significant character flaws as a lying braggart will quite make up for that loss.
Zemeckis is just about the most unlikely director you could find for this: very good in his halcyon days of Romancing the Stone, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Back to the Future at zippy, inventive comedy. Here it just feels like he's taken on a ball and chain with leaden-footed dialogue, stock growling Vikings and sub-videogame link sequence motion capture animation. The hero has no expression in his face and, behind it, Ray Winstone's attempts to sound noble rather than just a geezer in a pub are cringeworthy. And when we do finally hear Anglo-Saxon, it's only from the monster Grendel, as if it were some form of devil-speak.
A right royal mess.

4/10