Immortals. 2011. USA. Directed by Tarsem Singh Dhandwar. Screenplay by Charley Parlapanides, Vlas Parlapanides. With Henry Cavill, Freida Pinto, Mickey Rourke, Stephen Dorff, John Hurt. Costume design by Ekio Ishioka. DCP. 110 min.
Tarsem’s third feature is a revisionist take on the myth of Theseus (Henry Cavill), a mortal stonemason chosen by Zeus to wage war on the god Hyperion (a cheerfully sinister Mickey Rourke), who killed Theseus’s mother when he was a child. Hyperion seeks the Epirus Bow, which would allow him to dethrone the gods from Mount Olympus; to those ends he captures the virgin oracle Phaedra (Freida Pinto), who meets and falls in love with Theseus while in captivity. As the two join forces to overthrow their captor, Immortals reveals itself as a gleeful and epic exercise in style, seizing on the inherent potential of the mid-century sword-and-sandal genre recently defibrillated by films like Gladiator, Troy, and 300. (Tarsem described his pitch to studio executives as “Caravaggio meets Fight Club.”) Set in 13th-century Greece but shot entirely on massive sets at a Montreal soundstage, Immortals doesn’t feign interest in earthbound verisimilitude, drawing strength instead from opulent battle choreographies, dizzying tableaux, and an inspired cast that includes John Hurt, Stephen Dorff, and an uncredited Mark Margolis.