Absolutely Average and Below in Every Way, this by the Numbers Filmmaking from a Very Inconsistent Director is so Unremarkable that it Barely Exists and is in Danger of Fading from Memory So Fast that the Mythology of Hercules is Safe.

This is Not Awful, Not Good, Not Much of Anything. It just Sort of Lies there with Nothing to Say, Attract Attention or be Concerned About. The Acting is Across the Board Boring. The Story is Unfaithful to its Source Material and the Story being Told is so Familiar and Stale that even Youngsters will be Disappointed.

It is Disposable and Dull with that Old PG-13 Curse of Banality and Yawn Inducing Action Scenes (that are worse when dealing with swords, spears, and Gladiator type mayhem) that the Battles are Rendered War Weary from the Outset.

Overall, Not the Worst Thing ever, but if You are Going to Watch it, do it Soon before it Ceases to Exist like the Pools of Sweat from a Strenuous Workout.

Not the worst of anything to do with the Hercules legend, there are a few obscure low budget animated adaptations (not feature length) that are marginally worse. When it comes to feature length films, it would be very difficult to think of a worse depiction of Hercules than 'The Legend of Hercules'.

The sole saving grace is Liam McIntyre. He is the only actor who tries and the only one to feel right for his character and within the tone of the story. However the rest of the acting was just diabolical. Kellan Lutz has to be one of the most charisma-free and can't-act-his-way-out-a-paper-bag actors working today, he brings none of the heroism and conflict of this great charismatic hero and spends all his screen time looking blank and wooden and uttering his admittedly terrible lines with the flattest and most awkward line delivery imaginable.

Can't say anything better about the ladies either, who also show their acting limitations, especially the portrayal of Hebe who is in dire need of an acting coach. The obligatory villain acting is so pantomimic and overdone that one's surprised at how there was any scenery left from all the chewing, and it is so cartoonish that it veers on at times unintentionally comical rather than menacing.

Blame cannot be entirely laid at their door though. 'The Legend of Hercules' is very incompetently directed by a director that in the film's worst parts even makes Uwe Ball look good. Even worse is the script, which is extremely flabby and heavy in banality and melodrama. The characters are genre stereotypes basically and have the development of a thin piece of cardboard. The story, what there is of it (for the running time this is often wafer-thin and threadbare storytelling) rushes from one scene and plot point to another, and jumps around constantly that following what's going on is not always easy. But because the writing and characterisation has so little to them and that thrills, emotional engagement and such are next to none the film feels interminably dull and lifeless often.

Some bad fantasy-action-adventure films have the credit of looking good. That cannot be said at all for 'The Legend of Hercules' that looks like direct to video fodder from SyFy or The Asylum. The photography is unfocused and editing choppy, with an irritating over-reliance of slow motion and impregnated pauses that come over often as gimmicky, excessive and unnecessary. The sets and costumes look recycled, and to say that the special effects are dodgy is not just an understatement but actually pretty insulting, some of the worst effects of any film seen in recent years.

What little there is of the action is at best uninspired choreographically, an eyesore visually and in terms of peril they're somewhat tame. The music score is lifeless and forgettable, very generic genre scoring actually. The 50s and 60s Hercules films may have been cheap and cheesy, but at least they knew what their goals were, who they were aiming at and what tone to take. 'The Legend of Hercules' fails at all three of those things, often it was difficult to work out what it was trying to be or what tone it was aiming for as it tries to be light-hearted fun and also take it seriously and fails abysmally at both.

To summarise, very bad film. How it made it to theatres/cinemas and not straight to DVD is honestly a complete enigma to me, and this is coming from a very subjective person when expressing opinions. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Finnish director Renny Harlin continues to disgrace himself with this ultra-cheesy version of the Greek story which is frankly an embarrassment and stain on the career of all involved. THE LEGEND OF HERCULES is one of three similarly-themed films that came out around the same time; one is a B-movie with Sean Astin and the other a Hollywood blockbuster with Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The other two will need to be pretty bad to equal the poor quality of this one.

THE LEGEND OF HERCULES feels and looks like a cheap cash-in copy of 300 for the most part. Scott Adkins, who plays the stock villain in the film, is even dressed up to look like King Leonidas in his early scenes. The hero is played by Kellan Lutz, who played in support in THE EXPENDABLES 3 but has no discernible talent for his leading role here. In fact, he's dreadful. He may have a huge, Schwarzenegger-style physique, but he makes Schwarzenegger's acting style look like Laurence Olivier's by comparison.

It doesn't help that the below-par script was written by Sean Hood among others; Hood similarly fumbled the recent CONAN THE BARBARIAN remake, although that was better than this. There's little story and instead plenty of CGI-enhanced action including war scenes and fights with dodgy-looking lions. Some of the fight scenes aren't too bad, but they're overly stylised and feature silly scenes of characters doing superhuman jumps through the air and messing around instead of finishing off their opponents quickly.

All that was left for me to do was to sit back and count the appearances by actors from no less than four TV shows. Gaia Weiss, from VIKINGS, is the love interest, and Roxanne McKee (GAME OF THRONES) plays Hercules's mum, although of course she's far too young for the part. Kenneth Cranham (ROME) shows up as a slave trader. Best of all is Liam McIntyre (SPARTACUS) playing Hercules's friend and ally. I was amused to see that McIntyre is given an ugly fringe haircut so that he doesn't distract from Lutz's appearance. Anyone who has watched and enjoyed SPARTACUS will know McIntyre would have been far better in the lead role.