Brilliant

Rating: 9/10 (17 November 2007)

OH MY GOD. wonderful. Just wonderful. Fun movie on the action/gore stand point. Great exploration of acceptable sacrifices for great power. Go see it. In 3D if possible.
I re-read Beowulf two days before I saw the movie. Like so many of those pre-Shakespeare stories, it lacks the . . . interior dimension. There's no discussion of how anyone is thinking. That's the movie's biggest departure from the poem; we know how people are feeling. We know who's willing to make deals with the devil. Well, with with a naked Angelina Jolie. Um. We know why people are willing to make deals with the devil. With a naked Angelina Jolie. Um.
And then there's the dragon.
And naked Angelina Jolie has a very powerful tail.
Gaiman's Beowulf is a fascinating re-telling of the first extant story told in English. The oldest stab we have in English on what it means to be a hero. What it means to stand between the firelight and the darkness and wipe the blood of something inhuman from a sword.
On what it means to be a member of a civilization.
And Angelia Jolie rises from the old archetypal waters.
Go see it. Drink Mead with your friends Boast of your heroic deeds. Shiver at what lurks in the deals for power, in those old archetypal waters.