Immortals 3D *

Largely a gory excuse for cruel scenes of battle interrupted by slow-motion special effects of cruel scenes of gory decapitations and disembowelment, "Immortals" is a comic book without the intellectual heft. It has a main character called Theseus (a buff Henry Cavill) whose mission and ancestry have no relation to the Theseus of myth, except once with a Minotaur-like opponent whose appearance is never explained. The script is less than juvenile, chock full of disjointed cliches, and repeatedly insults the audience with references to the "faith" that sustains the downtrodden good guys. The movie is such a mocking mess that you have to wonder if it was written as high camp to amuse those paying attention while the fan boys eagerly await the next mutilating battle scene. There is a kind of apotheosis of mayhem in the movie, and occasional glimpses of the arresting stylistic sensibility that Tarsem Singh brought to the woefully under-appreciated "The Fall," but the movie itself in the end has very little to offer. Oh, and there are the gods of Olympus watching and sometimes participating, led by a Zeus who seems to make up the rules of being a god on the fly. I haven't seen such a wasteful and screeching mess since "Transformers 3."