Following two highly successful exhibitions on Lichtenstein and Matisse, the Tate Modern is currently home to a retrospective on the work of Kazimir Malevich. The Russian artist may not be as much of a household name as some of the other artists whose work has graced the factory-chic environs of the gallery, but he is equally, if not more, important than them in the history of 20^th century art.  The exhibition, spanning 12 rooms, is extensive enough to show the different phases in the artist’s development, which had plenty of different ‘isms’: Modernism, Cubism, Futurism and Suprematism.

Malevich was first exposed to European art in his mid-twenties when he attended a series of exhibitions in Moscow, displaying the works of French artists, such as Matisse, Manet and Cézanne. The influence of these artists on his early work, shown in the first room of the exhibition, is keenly felt. For example, Self Portrait (1908-10) possesses the bold tones and supple shapes characteristic of Gaugin. At this time, his paintings were also steeped in religious imagery, such as in his iconographic Assumption of a Saint (1907-8) and Shroud of Christ (1908). 

In reaction to Russian artists’ reliance on the Western avant-garde, Malevich and his contemporaries started to forge a specifically Russian form of modernism. He particularly focused on the image of the peasant, often seen as the embodiment of the Russian soul. Starting to form his own painterly style, Malevich made his figures simple and cumbersome, a type of painting with almost child-like naivety. Rather than breaking away from Western influences, Malevich manipulated them, merging the dynamism of Italian Futurism with the fractured perspectives of French Cubism and relating them to Russian themes – pastoral scenes and peasants. The outcome is peculiar.

The fourth room shows Malevich’s gradual path toward abstraction. In the early 1910s he collaborated on a Futurist opera, “Victory over the Sun”, which explored the breakdown of language and reason. The extract from the opera’s revival production in 1981 in New York is highly amusing – figures clad in Malevich’s geometric costumes prance around the stage singing a libretto of nonsensical sounds, like “ka…kakakaka”. This dissolution of reason led him to his phase of alogical paintings, the most famous example of which, An Englishman in Moscow (1914), features a big white fish, a tiny monastery, a red wooden spoon and some mysterious fragments of text. If there is meaning in it, it is hard to find.

The canvas of another alogical painting entitled War, conceived in response to the outbreak of WWI, was reused to create Malevich’s most radical and most famous work, the Black Quadrilateral. It is exactly what its title suggests: a square painted in black. Interestingly, Malevich dated the painting at 1913, even though it was actually painted in 1915, showing his belief in the birth of art at conception, rather than execution. This philosophy of art was formally defined as the ‘idealist theory’ by R.G. Collingwood in his book, The Principles of Art, in 1938 – one of the many ways in which Malevich was ahead of his time. Though simple in form, the painting is complex in meaning. With its simultaneous absence and presence, expressiveness and concealment, it questions the meaning of art itself. 

This painting is not only iconic, but iconographic: it was placed in the upper corner of the room, the place traditionally occupied by Orthodox icons when it was first exhibited in The Last Exhibition of Futurist Painting 0.10, the curation of which is recreated in the Tate exhibition. The other twelve paintings in this 1915 display, nine of which are on show at the Tate, are eclectically strewn across the wall, mirroring the disjointed nature of the ‘Suprematist’ works themselves, which contain basic geometric shapes – squares, crosses, lines – in prime colours. Here, curation becomes as important as the art itself. Some people interpreted the placement of Black Quadrilateral as a blasphemous provocation, however this is unlikely, as it was around this time that icons began to be regarded as works of art, rather than simply sacred objects.

Towards the end of the 1910s Malevich’s Suprematism reached its natural extreme. White Suprematist Cross (1920-1) saw an end to depictions of visible forms, an end to painting, coinciding with the dissolution of the autocratic rule which Russia had known for centuries. Malevich famously declared: “painting died, like the old regime, because it was an organic part of it.” The changing political environment compelled Malevich to become a teacher in Vitebsk, in modern-day Belarus. Along with his group of faithful disciples, he took Suprematism to an architectural level, adorning buildings and streets with its characteristic geometric shapes, like a proto-Banksy.

Where could Malevich’s art go next after it had been reduced to its barest form? The final two rooms of the exhibition show the last stage of Malevich’s career – a surprising return to figuration. His depiction of rural scenes took on a particular poignance under Stalin’s punitive regime with the brutal ‘collectivisation’ process and massacre of rich farmers, the ‘kulaks’. His images of the peasant, formerly so evocative, became faceless and dislocated. It seemed like a complete return to his early style: the portrait of his mother is highly reminiscent of that of his father, painted 30 years before. However, he had not forgotten everything that Surpematism had taught him. Malevich’s portraits may have evoked Renaissance Florence, but he tellingly signed them off with a little black square, quite literally his signature move.

Though the black square was banned by the Stalinist regime and not re-exhibited until the 1980s, it lived on in the popular imagination, understated yet immensely symbolic. Though I went to the exhibition on the day it opened, it was fairly empty. On a selfish level I was happy – there are few things more frustrating than an over-crowded exhibition. But I was also surprised. This retrospective is beautifully curated, down to the mustard-yellow colour of the walls, which complements the hues of the paintings. More importantly, it commemorates one of the most talented, diverse and important artists of the 20^th century. If there is anything on your cultural to-do list this summer, it should be this. 

★★★★☆
Four Stars

As a go-abroad sequel to a go-abroad spin-off, The Inbetweeners 2 looked doomed to failure. Its tackily self-referential teaser trailer (“Fire wankers!”) prepared us for a catchphrasey, regressive trudge over the same old ground. The result is cringeworthy. But not in the way you might expect.

Watching the first film was an oddly comfortable experience. The situations may have been extreme and the swearing inventive, but they felt plagiarised from the TV series, awkwardly bloated when stretched onto the big screen. The writers seemed to assume that fans would laugh at the word ‘clunge’ because saying ‘clunge’ was funny in season two.

The second feels like more of a risk. It’s less quotable, for one thing, and there are moments of genuine tenderness and feeling – the show’s “Morning, benders” machismo has always been transparently hollow, but the sequel allows us to see through this self-conscious swagger to the insecurities and sadness of the adolescent.

This is balanced, naturally and rightly, with moments of excruciating crudity. In one scene set in a water park, Will (Simon Bird) is chased down a water slide by a shit. He gets caught. His bespattered face and spectacles, crestfallen and vomiting, fill one half of the screen, while a terrified stampede of fleeing tourists occupies the other.

This is a powerful scene. No, really. It’s a defining moment for the unspontaneous, pseudo-intellectual Will of this film, a lonely university fresher who seems lost without the reassuring superiority he has always felt over his friends. In desperation, he has accompanied them to Australia, and receives unlikely attention from his prep-school sweetheart, Katie (Emily Berrington). In his search for self-assurance, he neglects his friends, pretends to like his enemies, starts using ‘man’ as a greeting. His principles are suspended and his manners contrived; her affection is all he has left. The shit in the water park is therefore a strangely uplifting counterpoint to this pretension, casting him ingloriously back to earth. And that’s how a poo-covered, vomiting fresher, played by a 30-year old actor, in a sequel to a film that should probably never have been made in the first place, can be the hilarious and tragic, unwatchable and irresistible hero of a compelling moment of cinema.

This combination of vulgarity and feeling is effective, but it isn’t sustained. If Will is well-observed and likeable, the supporting characters are largely one-dimensional: lazy, gap-yah stereotypes; beer-swilling, misogynistic Australians; backgroundless, unlikeable women. The absence of interesting female characters is particularly disappointing in a film that’s otherwise surprisingly culturally literate (no, really).

But then again, The Inbetweeners 2 was never trying to be a perfect or a polished film, and nor should it. Its low-budget, sixth-form common room roughness has always been at the centre of its charm. And there are lots of jokes. And most of them are really funny. 

You’re a first time independent filmmaker with a great story but no money. Up until recently, this all too familiar scenario would have seen you approach any number of investors, businesses, studios or grant schemes in order to acquire a budget to turn your film into a reality. But just as your vision was being funded, it was also being diluted, by the investors and producers with one eye on an artistic vision but with another on the demands of the market, and ultimately their bank accounts.

The last few years, however, have seen a seismic shift in how independent and first time film makers get bankrolled as a result of the emergence of crowd funding websites such as Kickstarter, which allow anybody from across the world to finance your film in incremental amounts based only on a pitch. This is usually done in return for just a T-shirt and possibly a digital copy of the film once it’s completed. These sites have empowered aspiring film makers, but also upset the investor-filmmaker-audience paradigm in a way that has attracted the attention of the profit hungry studios and their subsidiaries.

The growth of Kickstarter has been incredible. Founded in 2009, the site has to date funded independent film projects to a tune of over $190 million. The site’s alumni have comprised over 10% of the films exhibited at The Sundance Film Festival for the last three years in a row, and the site has had its hand in some of the biggest independent hits of the last five years. From recent dark comedy and critical darling Obvious Child to the genre success of last year’s Blue Ruin, the site has launched numerous success stories and provided a great way for first time directors to tell their stories.

Kickstarter has also become a haven for documentary filmmakers, with the $190 million split almost equally between fiction and non fiction projects. However, last year’s well regarded Room 237, which explored elaborate explanations of Kubrick’s The Shining, illustrates the general trend of many of the non-fiction projects to tend towards geek culture, as with the recent release of Video Game: The Movie, a documentary exploring the gaming industry from a variety of angles. Apart from these successful features, directors of short films, a format notable for its almost guaranteed unprofitably, have found the site incredibly receptive. This has made Kickstarter a go-to resource for first time productions or student filmmakers who are eager to establish their filmographies with financial resources but limited pressure.

Predictably, the site’s success at engaging an audience of amateur financiers has attracted the attention of big business, and with it, questions have arisen about the equity of the Kickstarter model. Established names have always dabbled with the site – Paul Schrader and Bret Easton Ellis funded the Lindsay Lohan vehicle The Canyons through the site in 2012 – but it wasn’t until the $6 million success of the Veronica Mars film project, which revived the long dead TV series starring Kristen Bell, that Hollywood really began to take notice. Fans were told that the Veronica Mars campaign was the last shot at making the film, that Warner Bros. had definitively passed on financing it. That the fan funded film was then distributed by Warner Bros. left a sour taste in many people’s mouths. Whilst Warmer Bros. counted their profits thanks to their extremely limited investment, fans were left with a copy of the film they’d invested in and perhaps a limited edition hoody.

This discontent reared its head a few months later, when Zach Braff’s kickstarter for a “spiritual sequel” to his 1999 cult smash Garden State seemed opportunist to many. That a well liked and by all accounts extremely wealthy sitcom actor and proven director couldn’t find funding for a sophomore feature seemed unlikely to many, and accusations of profiteering were levelled at Braff. When the film was later acquired for distribution in a multi-million dollar deal by the speciality division of Universal it seemed to many that Kickstarter had become just another cog in the corporate side of speciality film distribution.

The problems inherent in the increased presence of celebrity and Hollywood on Kickstarter are two fold. Firstly, the high profile projects which attract significant media attention threaten to drown out the visibility of filmmakers for whom the site represents a real last resort. The site is a lifeline for groups traditionally marginalised by Hollywood, such as female, queer and ethnic minority voices who genuinely face incredible obstacles in acquiring funding and attracting an audience to their work, and to whom establishing an audience though a Kickstarter campaign is vital.

Secondly, Kickstarted films are funded by people who have no stake in the film’s success. When financing microbudget films with little commercial appeal, the lack of equity stake seems relatively unimportant, particularly when the upside is an independent filmmaker’s dream – a pre-established audience, money and artistic freedom. However, when this model is applied to films from directors with enough connection to cast Hollywood A-listers and who later sell their films for millions in upfront payments from distributors, the inequity of the site’s reward structure appears more problematic. Even whilst their high profile project may attract a few more eyeballs to the pages of more transgressive projects, it is hard not to feel that these celebrities are perverting the site’s goals for their own gain and to attach a little more indie credibility to their projects.

The challenge facing the site and those hoping to use it is now to maintain both viability and credibility. The site’s touted 40% funding success rate obviously remains attractive to student and first time filmmakers, but it remains to be seen what the celebrity dalliances of 2013 will do to this statistic. Will it be that the pot of money people use to fund Kickstarter projects with will now gravitate towards the more high profile projects, or will there be a reactive backlash from the independent community? The early signs indicate the latter. Since Victoria Mars grabbed headlines with its record setting success, high profile projects such as Braff’s Wish I Was Here and Spike Lee’s The Sweet Blood of Jesus have drawn increasingly muted responses from the site’s funders, each project surpassing their goals with slimmer and slimmer margins. Furthermore, Lee felt compelled to emphasise his own underground roots in his campaign, hoping to avoid the seismic Twitter storm previously weathered by Braff.

Ultimately, Kickstarter remains an important and effective tool for the creation of low budget original features from emerging and student filmmakers, where artists are able to sell their vision rather than their profitability. Hopefully celebrity’s dalliance with the site will have only brought greater visibility to these emerging talents, and the people who fund them.

Armie Hammer is one of the most sought-after young actors in Hollywood. Not yet twenty-eight, the six-foot-five leading man has already taken direction from David Fincher, Clint Eastwood and Guy Ritchie in addition to starring alongside the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp and Julia Roberts.

He recently wrapped principal photography on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and is in the midst of producing something of a passion project—a documentary about his transcontinental Vespa expedition with a cast of his closest friends. He tells me that he and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their first child, and the actor fails miserably to conceal the obvious pride in his eyes as he reaches for his beer.

“We had been married for four years. We had travelled to about six continents, worked everywhere we could imagine; we’d taken amazing vacations and really enjoyed marriage, just the two of us, almost as much as you possibly could. So we were like, let’s introduce that next thing. We tried for about six or seven months. It’s a lot harder to get pregnant than it seems in high school.” We tacitly agree he should revise this position before any future graduation ceremonies, and he recalls fondly his own, “extremely peripatetic” childhood.

Riding a seller’s market, the Hammers moved yearly before settling down for a considerable portion of Armie and brother Viktor’s childhood in the Cayman Islands. Armie, great-grandson of famed businessman Armand Hammer, of Occidental Petroleum, considers his time in the Caymans as developmentally transformative. “It changed the way I dealt with people. It changed the way I dealt with stress. It changed the way I dealt with life. [Moving] was difficult. And moving back to Los Angeles was amazing at first, but then I hated it because I didn’t have the social tools to live in Los Angeles. I had grown up on an island. You’re nice to everybody. You’re going to see them again so you’re never a jerk. Whereas, you come to L.A.,”—he reads my mind about Hollywood’s reputation for the highest standards of propriety—“there’s this incredibly mean sort of social thing going on that I just didn’t have the tools for.”

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Unbeknownst to him at the time, it was Armie’s itinerant lifestyle that ultimately prepared him for a career in acting.  “The more actors I speak to I realise that there is a kindred past. Most actors that I can think of moved quite a bit, and I think it builds this survival mechanism where you develop the ability to adjust. You have to meet new people. To read people. You can be with different groups of people, and you’re not being dishonest about who you are, but you’re also allowing a different part of you to interact with these people. It encourages characters.”

It was here in the Caymans where Armie first realized that he wanted to become an actor. His parents thought him crazy; perhaps he needed something their island medicine cabinet lacked due to geographical constraints. Yet the precocious Armie was able to see the distinction early on between film’s specificity for projecting fantasy and the reality that he might one day play a contributing role in the experience.

“It started for me when I saw Home Alone living in the Caymans.I had a dream that I was Macaulay Culkin in the movie. It didn’t translate, oh, what a fun dream. It translated to, that’s acting. There’s something about it that feels like a bigger message that I’m getting.” He reclines in his chair, throwing his arms to the heavens in self-deprecation. “I’m supposed to be an actor! I knew that I wanted to participate in the fantasy. I knew that making movies was magical. Watching them even more so.”

Returning to Los Angeles aged thirteen, he began going for auditions, and although “each one of them was a lot like being in a car wreck,” he confesses that part of him revelled in the experience. Yet after only a scant few of these episodes his parents had had enough of chauffeuring him around in traffic and subjecting him to the lifestyle of a child actor. Speaking now on others with less fortunate direction, his countenance, falling serious for the first time, reflects the immediacy of a soon-to-be father who’s seen it first-hand. “It fucks these kids up. Sometime beyond repair.”

After finding acting again in his late teens, a mature Armie received an invaluable crash course in moviemaking politics while portraying evangelist Billy Graham in his first leading role.  

“The movie [Billy: The Early Years] turned out to be a holy war. Robbie [Benson], the director, isn’t religious at all; he’s a humanist. He loves all people—especially underdogs. Certain people were convinced he was the devil. They had priests show up to exorcise demons from the set. I got together and told these guys they were barred from set while we try to make this movie.” Invariably, “there’s more shit than there is actual movie making process,” and I wonder whether certain studios in the Valley might not benefit from the tempered hand of a board-certified exorcist.

Familiar as he now was with the tumultuous nature of his profession, were his antennae able to pick up on clues as to the eventual success of David Fincher’s The Social Network? Not necessarily, he tells me. “The thing that made me not think of all that was just how nervous I was. I felt like I was in over my head. I was pulling double duty, playing two characters, with Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue being directed by David Fincher. It scared the piss out of me.”

Instead of focusing on his self-proclaimed deficiency in experience, Armie channelled his energies into avoiding becoming the “weakest link” at all costs. Work came first. David Fincher saw to that.

“[Fincher] is the smartest person that I’ve ever been in a room with—hands down. And he wields it like a club. His direction was really specific because of the way his brain works, just the broadband of shit he’s able to focus on at once. He’s looking at your body position; he’s looking at where you are in the frame; he’s looking at the branches of every tree. We stopped takes during Social Network and he would say, ‘Someone get up in that tree and tie that branch down.’ Guys on the crew would laugh saying, ‘OK, yeah sure’. He’d say, ‘I’m not fucking kidding, now you’re wasting my time. Someone get up in that tree and tie that branch down.’ Every now and then he’ll ask, ‘Why aren’t we shooting?’ Quietly. But you hear it through the whole set.”

Fincher also has a notorious propensity for shooting upwards of fifty takes for one scene, and while many actors have difficulty with such repetitive volume, Armie appreciated the stylistic technique.

“The way I like to think about acting is everybody has the same set, essentially, of emotions. If you were going to really simplify it, it would be like sitting in front of a mixing board—with all the different levels—and everybody has one switch that is their anger, and their happiness, and their this and that. Every character that you make is built out of those same switches on the same switchboard, but it’s about how much you turn up this, versus how much you turn down this. It’s just about those little tiny tweaks you make in between every single take. You go, on the next one I’ll try a little bit of this. I don’t know why somebody wouldn’t appreciate it. It feels like safety. Like you’re taken care of, in a way. It was like going to film school, working with David Fincher.”

Compared to Clint Eastwood, the American frontier personified, the difference in directorial style is best illustrated by take count. “Dude, it’s like comparing ice cubes to lava. [Clint] has boiled down filmmaking to its most essential elements. He’ll walk off set and go the gym; that guy’s got veins bulging in his biceps. You’ll do a scene and he’ll go, ‘Great. Alright. Onto the next thing.’ And you’ll be like, wait, Boss—everybody calls him Boss—Boss, can we get one more? And he’ll go, ‘No, I really think that was it.’ There wasn’t a day when we didn’t lunch-wrap.”

For J. Edgar Armie accepted the challenge of playing Clyde Tolson, J. Edgar Hoover’s alleged lover. In preparing for the role he had to delve into the psychology of a repressed homosexual while maintaining the authenticity of portraying an elderly stroke victim, playing the character from his early twenties through his late seventies—no small task. “That role was the scariest. I turned down the audition twice because I was like, I don’t get it. It’s too scary. I wasn’t playing college kids anymore.”

Though J. Edgar opened to an uninspiring critical reaction it pales in comparison to the universally-regarded blemish of Disney’s The Lone Ranger. I ask him flatly if that movie’s vitriolic critical reception is the reason for the ensuing poor box office attendance, as Johnny Depp has controversially claimed. 

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“For sure. But it depends on how much credit you really want to give critics. I would also place a lot of credit in the hands of the audience. People knew what Disney was doing: very obviously trying to set up their next big franchise. They wanted their next Pirates of the Caribbean, with the same guys [producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski]. If you were making movies in a vacuum, it would have been perfect. But the audience knew they weren’t being sold the first Lone Ranger movie. They knew that they were being sold what we were meeting with [Disney] about which was how they were going to turn part of Disneyland into the Wild West.”

More commerce than art?

“Totally. It was about setting up a franchise. 100% what it was about.”

Surely, not Disney?

“I think the audience said, ‘We’re not ready for that.’ Pirates of the Caribbean was spontaneous. It was lightning in a bottle… The movie itself I was fine with. The finished product? Tonally, there were definitely issues. It wasn’t a perfect movie, but at the same time I don’t know that it deserves the backlash it got.”

We progress into the present in silent acknowledgement of the setting California sun, pushing onwards in the face of overwhelming tragedy; the beer has been depleted. I ask about Tom Cruise, originally tapped to co-star alongside Armie in the Cold War adventure film, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

“I met Tom on the set of J. Edgar when we were doing late night shoots with his son, Connor. He shows up with his son and just walks on set. Just wants to see Clint. I think he was in a Veyron at the time. Who knows what he was doing? It’s a weird thing—I’m over it now because we’ve spent so much time together, but when Tom Cruise walks into a room, people get funny. People who you’re like, oh they’ve got it under control, they’ll act weird. He’s Tom Cruise. Literally the movie star. The most famous movie star. He is the guy. When he walks into a room people drop shit. And like, yelp. Cry. Weird, weird stuff.

“So he shows up, meets everybody. I think he knows Leo. Then he comes up to me and he’s like, ‘Hi. Tom. So nice to meet you.’ Later we end up doing the full screen test before I get a call saying Tom’s out. Sure. Whatever. Tom Cruise has like eight movies that he’s working on at all times. I just know we had a blast working together while we did.”

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Hammer and Henry Cavill on the set of U.N.C.L.E.

U.N.C.L.E. marked another learning experience. Having wrapped principal photography, Armie found himself frustrated with a different aspect of the Hollywood process. “I loved every second of it and I’ve learned so much—but at the same time, for the first month of shooting, I didn’t say anything. It was artistically frustrating. I didn’t get into this to do action movies. I didn’t get into this to drive the car, or shoot the gun, or jump out of planes.” He cites this as his impetus for branching into co-producing his first theatrical feature, Mine, along with his Vespa documentary. “Mine was one of the best scripts I’d read in a long time and it seemed like such an amazing opportunity. It was just like let’s go. Let’s do it.”

Since his pregnant wife is waiting for him at home, I release his shackles and tell Armie he’s free to go after one last question. How might his own fame affect raising his child? He smiles.

“Ah man. It’s so funny. I just don’t consider myself famous. I don’t really consider the problems of raising my child while—I don’t even like saying famous—I don’t know. I would like to do everything I can to raise them so they don’t even realize it. This one will probably spend more time on road trips than anything else. Seeing stuff and having fun. Guy [Ritchie] gave me a lot of advice. He was like ‘There’s nothing about it that’s difficult. There’s nothing about it you need to fear. Just go for it. Quit fucking around.’ But you know we just travel so much—‘You crazy? Who cares? Take them with you.’ He made it so much about like dude, you’re making up problems.”

I anticipate a bright future. For his little one-to-be, and for the nomadic young actor who still, to this day, remains on the move.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E is scheduled for January 2015 release.

Three Stars
★★★☆☆

Amidst the giant robots and the superheroes who make up the majority of Hollywood’s population these days is a running tradition of films based on Ancient Greece. Producers seem to see the land of Plato and Homer as ideal source material for sword and sorcery epics, as well as gratuitous nudity and gore.

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Films such as the 300 franchise and Brad Pitt’s Troy have popularized the trope of blurring the line between history and myth, and it is the latter film which the new production of Hercules, starring Dwayne Johnson, emulates the most. Just as Achilles’ famed immortality is referenced in Troy, but basically denied, along with the existence of the gods, Hercules is here transformed into a mercenary-for-hire whose heroic myth is merely a fabrication by his spin-doctor nephew intended to frighten his enemies.

To the Ancient Greeks, Hercules, or Heracles, as he was known in their language, was an extremely prominent mythical figure. Not only were the stories about the life of the son of Zeus known to all, there were even a number of temples devoted to his worship, and an annual festival, the Heracleia, commemorating his death.

With all of this rich, cultural history surrounding the man, one might fear that his complete persona could not be summed up through the acting abilities of The Rock. However, Heracles as a figure is most commonly seen in art, depicted on pots, murals and the like. As a result, his image in antiquity essentially boils down to a strong man with a club, and it is difficult to think of any actor who could embody this better than Johnson in a loin cloth.

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See what I mean?

The Rock’s physicality is a key part of this film’s success, and care is taken to show off his muscles as often as possible. Meanwhile, the rest of the film excels visually, with attentive costume design and magnificent locations, both real and computer-generated. The CGI monsters present in Hercules’ labours are also impressive, though in a slightly bizarre, Scooby-Dooesque twist, they all turn out to be fake – the Hydra, hilariously, turns out to be nine dudes in masks.

As one might expect from a film so keen to marginalize mythology, the story is grounded in an historical context at all times. Set in Thrace in 358 BC, it tells the real-life tale of Cotys I, king of Thrace, played, somewhat surprisingly, by the always brilliant John Hurt. In Cotys’ struggles with warlords in ancient Thrace, he was famously aided by the mercenary Charidemus.

Hercules replaces Charidemus, and his mythical master Eurystheus replaces King Philip I of Macedon, making it clear that someone with some knowledge of ancient history had a lot of fun working on this script. Furthermore, placing the emphasis on a local power struggle rather than some kind of battle to save the world makes the story more relatable than other epics like the recent Clash of the Titans or The Immortals.

The films strengths are its stunning visuals, Dwayne Johnson’s genial and believable portrayal of the son of Zeus, and some genuinely hilarious scenes such as Hercules’ nephew explaining to some soldiers how Hercules removed the indestructible hide of the Erymanthian Boar (he used an indestructible blade, obviously).

Its weaknesses include an irritating tendency to spell out its moral messages until they’re engraved into your eardrums, an astonishingly predictable storyline (will the relentlessly mercenary Rufus Sewell turn up again in the nick of time? Yeah, probably) and a severely juvenile sense of humour. However, these are the stuff that 12As are made of, and by Zeus is it a lot of fun.