This take on the famous Beowulf tale (which, for the record, I have not read) has Beowulf (Ray Winstone) coming to a village that is being terrorized by the monster Grendel (Crispin Glover). Beowulf intends to fulfill his legendary reputation as a skilled warrior and kill the beast, thus setting the various denizens of this village free. However, in his quest to destroy Grendel, Beowulf comes upon the demons mother (Angelina Jolie), who tempts Beowulf with promises of royal power in exchange for him helping her create a new son. Beowulf gives into this temptation, which leaves Grendel's mother alive, which leads him to taking up the crown at this village but he must live with the shame of not killing this demon and aiding her in her nefarious ways.
It appears, to me anyway, that the film is trying to do some kind of deconstruction of Beowulf and the innate concept of conventional legendary warriors by having Beowulf develop such a lofty profile after actually killing Grendel and lying about taking Grendel's mother. He gets to be king and obtain all this power, but it comes by way of him building his royal life almost entirely on lies, something that weighs heavy on his soul as the years go on. It's an interesting idea, one that has a typical fantasy hero (a macho dude who charges into combat like it's no problem) that is the stuff of legend become consumed by guilt by the unsavory actions he does to keep himself prolific in the eyes of the normal people who spread his name as legend.
Unfortunately, the character of Beowulf and basically everyone else in the movie is so flatly developed that this more subversive take on finding the man within a figure of legend really doesn't work. It's hard to care about Beowulf grappling with how his entire reputation is built on lies in the third act when he's his entire character up to that point has solely been comprised of a lot of shouting and punching. Supporting characters played by Robin Wright Penn, John Malkovich and Brendan Gleeson are similarly underdeveloped, leaving the films more introspective moments feeling way emptier than they should.
These more intended to be thoughtful sequences also don't gel well with the action-heavy scenes, which go all-out in providing large-scale fantasy mayhem. Unlike the failed attempts at deconstructing the Beowulf mythos though, the action at least scores some points for being fun in spurts, particularly in a climactic showdown between Beowulf and a dragon where the lead character manages to fight the dragon across loads of different places, including going underwater at one point. There's no real character stuff to ground it in but it's just gonzo enough in the way it keeps trying to top itself that it's probably the best part of the whole movie.
And then there's the motion-capture animation, which really feels like a major reason why this whole movie doesn't come together. Beowulf was released two years and a month prior to Avatar, but compared to the motion-capture seen in that James Cameron movie, you'd think Beowulf came out a little over a decade prior to it considering how lackluster the animation is. People's movements, especially when they're trying to move fast, are stilted, their eyes are vacant and they have this eerie "not quite human" quality that sinks the movie into the Uncanny Valley, the same terrain that capsized Robert Zemeckis's far worse Polar Express movie. Free of having to always use a camera rig in the world of animated filmmaking, Zemeckis also has the camera twirling around or cutting across locations in a fast-paced manner that seems like the result of someone daring him to do the complete opposite of the still and methodical camerawork seen in the works Yosujiro Ozu. Basically, that type of camerawork and the entire motion-capture animation aspect of Beowulf feels like more of a pointless gimmick that's a full-on hindrance to it actually working more than anything else.
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