It's hard not to compare Tarsem Singh's Immortals to Zack Snyder's historical epic 300 (and to a large extent also Clash of the Titans) Not only because they share some of the same producers but both feature stunning visuals, men fighting for honour (shouting battle cries with bare chests!) and stylized action sequences. But where Snyder's film – the historically questionable beast that it is – gets by on its inventive action (if nothing else) Tarsem's film doesn't have strong enough action to carry the rest of the film.
Immortals takes place after an epic war that has split those who are now known as Gods from those who are now known as Titans. Zeus (Luke Evans) chooses a mortal man Theseus (Henry Cavill) to lead a war against the ruthless King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) who is seeking a mystical bow which would help him destroy humanity.
The problem with Immortals is not that it doesn't deliver enough action. In fact, it has more than its share of that to go around. But it's the in-between segments that are the real issue here, feeling like whenever it stops for breath for another overly long, sometimes pointless exposition scene that you can't wait for the next action scene to hurry up and come along. But even then the film is so horribly paced that the action comes not as a welcome surprise to inject the plot with excitement but feels rather random and ill-timed. It doesn't hold together as a cohesive whole.
This wouldn't matter as much if the action itself was revolutionary or even genuinely thrilling. But with the exception of a few key scenes in which the action is truly dazzling - for its special effects-heavy stylization and use of slow-motion more than anything else – it is rather repetitive and even generic in a way, perhaps because we've seen this type of thing done before a lot better, namely in the aforementioned 300.
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