Clash of the CGI Effects Houses

Rating: 10/10 (5 May 2011)

I was expecting this to be horrible after reading the flogging this film got in the reviews, actually it was done very well. Director Louis Leterrier did as well as he could for 2008's The Incredible Hulk and of course the original Transporter film, I do not know if this film puts him in the same league as Peter Jackson and James Cameron. He did however do a good job.
The whole look of this film is very good - The landscapes are believable and the characters are as good as any of the gods from the Xena/Hercules franchise (Which I loved, by the way, especially Ares). The CGI blends in with the practical elements very well, and I think my favourite image is the Djinn and his little blue flame. Leterrier clearly steals some of Guillermo del Toro's disturbing imagery with his Stygian Witches - And a few other Del Toro-isms appear, placed in perfect places.
Of course I watched this due to Sam Worthington, who is the new Orlando Bloom of the 2010's - Just as Orlando Bloom was the action star of the 2000's. These guys give the film industry great new blood, I love these guys. Basically, James Cameron made this guy a superstar, but he is just a great stock actor- I love his little slips into Australian Accent now and then.
This film is a feast of great actors, a lot of them just doing cameos - Mads Mikkelsen leads the support cast along with Pete Postelhwaite (Perseus' Fosterfather), Lliam Neeson (Zeus), and Ray Fiennes (Lord Voldemort of Harry Potter) as Hades and that a great casting job. In the background we see Danny Houston and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Dr. Bashir, Siddig Al-Fadeel (as Alexander Siddig). Alexa Davalos is Andromeda and probably the most beautiful actress to date, Gemma Arterton as Io.
This film is basically the story of Perseus lopping off the head of Medusa, a story that has been told and retold in books and films since forever, so that cannot be a spoiler as we all know the story - but unlike Harry Hamlin - Worthington shuns the help of Zeus at every turn.
The Kraken in this film is probably my favourite creature of the film,not a but like the great Ray Harrihousen depicted it, and not like the beast from Pirates of the Caribbean, almost a cross between the two.
I also like the Punk Rock look of Medusa, she can turn me into stone any day, I think the idea of making love to a woman with a snake-hairdo was probably sexy to the men who originally thought up the Medusa story, this treatment of Medusa is very sexy, the upper half at least. And casting Natalia Vodianova was a stroke, she was not monstrous unless she was looking at someone.
The standout performance of this film of course is Jason Flemyng as Calibos, I did not recognise Flemyng at all underneath all that hair and stuff.
I've watched this about seven times so far, and I've enjoyed it each time. It is done rather well, but probably not as a 3-D film, it was made and released very rapidly when Avatar was released, so it was not really filmed to be a 3-D film was Avatar was filmed specifically on 3-D cameras. It does well however on a regular flat screen, that's how it should have been released- It is probably more effective in 2-D anyway - But as I have never seen this in 3D, I don't know.
I always like to enjoy movies for what they are, not for what the shameless publicity hype said they were.