Beowulf & Grendel (Action Adventure / Completed)

Venting a life long grudge against the men who killed his father, monstrous troll Grendel embarks on a murderous campaign against a Danish settlement whose besieged king beseeches the aid of legendary warrior Beowulf.

When Grendel returns to wreak his nightly slaughter in the king's great hall, Beowulf and his band of monster slayers are ready and waiting. But the sly troll evades his ambushers by fleeing into his labyrinthine cave and Beowulf resorts to an ignoble trick, luring him out with hostage Selma, a town outcast who strangely doesn't fear Grendel and who shares with the creature a mysterious congress. When Beowulf slays the vengeful troll in a grisly, bloody engagement, Selma mourns while the others rejoice. However, the revelry is short lived as Grendel's mother, the even more terrifying Sea Hag begets her own revenge.

Hunting the sea creature to her lair beneath the ocean, Beowulf discovers the startling secret connecting Selma to Grendel and battles the fearsome Sea Hag in a confrontation that will commit his name to legend for the ages.

Director: Sturla Gunnarsson

Writer: Andrew Rai Berzins

Producers: Michael Cowan, Friðrik Þór Friðriksson, Sturla Gunnarsson, Eric Jordan, Anna María Karlsdóttir, Jason Piette, Paul Stephens

Production Companies: Arclight Films / Beowulf Productions Limited / Endgame Entertainment / Grendel Productions Inc. / Spice Factory Ltd. / The Film Works Ltd. / The Icelandic Film Corporation

"...Gerard Butler, who seems to have a particular affinity for larger-than-life roles, commandingly plays Beowulf, the Norse hero recruited by his friend King Hrothgar (Stellan Skarsgard) to rid his kingdom of the murderous troll Grendel (Ingvar Sigurdsson)..."

"...Shooting on rugged Icelandic locations, cinematographer Jan Kiesser provides gorgeous widescreen vistas that give the film a visual power..."

"...Thanks to its visual imagination and the committed performances of its cast -- Skarsgard provides welcome humor as the beleaguered king and Sigurdsson is as fierce a villain as one could imagine -- this full-blooded rendition of the Norse saga should prove a handy video study guide for students for years to come."

William Arnold, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

"...Shot entirely in the outback of Iceland, it's a gallery of hauntingly beautiful locations, and director Sturla Gunnarsson skillfully uses its bleak otherworldliness to distance us from anything familiar and evoke a lost heroic age...."

"...The cast also is solid. Sarah Polley is just right as a sympathetic, Grendel-friendly witch; Stellan Skarsgard is at his scene-stealing best as the imperiled king; and, as Beowulf, Gerard Butler (the Phantom of "Phantom of the Opera") is a vision of unconflicted Viking charisma..."

Bill Gallo, The Village Voice:

"For those who've never had much luck plowing through Beowulf's 3,200 lines of alliterative Old English, Gunnarsson's version might be a useful alternative-as long as you're not dead set on linguistic purity or the parable about honor and duty that defines the original. It's good, bloody fun that stirs the intellect whenever it feels like it, and as a swashbuckler, the dead-game Butler outswings just about anyone in TROY or KINGDOM OF HEAVEN or TRISTAN & ISOLDE. Those overblown historical epics played just as loosely with history as this one does, but they didn't boast a third of its bawdy, sly humor."

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