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King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) rewards the warrior for his heroism

Beowulf is every bit as interested in Faustian bargains as the temptations that set those bargains in motion. Grendel's naked mother, oozing sex and seduction, and whispering flattering praise, is temptation personified. But the image she chooses to take is not her real form. It is only a masquerade with which to ensnare her prey—her true form is a reptilian monstrosity little different than her misshapen son and every bit as deadly. Like those things that tempt us to stray from the righteous path, her physical sensuality is a mask for her lethality.

Zemeckis, Avery and Gaiman's Beowulf is not the infallible hero one might expect, but a deeply flawed, all too human man with faults and weaknesses, chief among them hubris and pride. Beowulf sees himself as invincible. He has come to believe in the songs sung about him in mead halls. Worse, while irrefutably emboldened with might and valor, he has taken to exaggerating his exploits, polishing them with little embellishments. But his lies, and the indiscretions they camouflage, return to haunt him when he is an old man, all too aware of his shortcomings and sins.

By utilizing the most modern technology, Zemeckis has breathed new life into an ancient tale. Zemeckis and his special effects wizards accomplished their task much in the same way that Peter Jackson transformed a man in black Spandex into the creature Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In "performance capture," minute digital sensors are attached to actors' bodies allowing computers to interpret the data as movement and generate fluid, lifelike dynamism within a wholly virtual environment. Most of the animated characters resemble their real-life doppelgangers, with the exception of John Malkovich's Unferth and Winston's (far slimmer) Beowulf avatar. For Beowulf, the animators' inspiration was simple—a six-foot-six, incredibly muscular, Norse Jesus Christ.

Grendel's seductive mother (Angelina Jolie) is determined to avenge his death

The performance capture technology is distracting at first precisely because it is so new, and by its very nature, calls attention to itself. Instead of letting yourself be washed away by the story, you find yourself studying the mechanisms that made the story possible in the first place. Gradually, the technology fades into the background, and finally becomes utterly indispensable. Why the filmmakers choose this particular medium may not, at first, be obvious, but by the end, will be abundantly clear.

Grendel is envisioned as a putrid, rotted, decomposing corpse with great fissures in his scaly skin where flesh should be. He lumbers around, muttering in all but indecipherable Old English (the poem's original tongue). Peculiarly enough, it is precisely this grotesque deformation that ensures he is the most believable of all the characters.

Where the performance capture technology fails is with the human face. The animators have yet to find a way to convincingly render the face with all of its nuance and subtly of emotion. If the eyes are indeed the windows of the soul, then Beowulf's characters' souls are impenetrable. They are emotionless, plastic zombies with dead gazes.

Beowulf pushes the limits of its PG-13 rating. If the film had been live action instead of animated, it would certainly garner a hard R-rating. The violence and gore is pervasive. Grendel rips and tears bodies apart and chews them up with relish. Though the film never indulges in any explicit sexual situations, it does inject plenty of innuendo. The film gives equal opportunity to both male and female nudity. Early on, Beowulf battles Grendel in the nude, a primal, animalistic fight that, thanks to a few well placed props, hides Beowulf's more vulnerable parts, Austin Powers style. Later, when Beowulf confronts Grendel's mother, she rises from the water of the cave, all shapes and curves and long, unbroken lines. Covered in a thin veneer of gold lacquer, the siren's nudity is like that of a mannequin, curvaceous but anatomically indistinct.

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