As an unwarranted sequel to a poorly received remake of a tepid ’80s fantasy flick that rates as a B-grade cult gem at best, there’s very little to justify Wrath of the Titans‘ existence. One can only assume that somebody wanted a do-over of what could have been a potentially good franchise starter. The only thing worse than a flop is an encore performance.
Ubiquitous and wooden leading man Sam Worthington returns as Perseus, the demigod son of Zeus (Liam Neeson) who defied the gods and rejected his divine status in Clash of the Titans (2010). Persy is now a single dad dedicated to living the simple life of a fisherman and teaching his son Helios (John Bell) to be anything but a warrior.
Fate, as it tends to do in epic fantasies and epic wannabes, intervenes when god of the underworld Hades (Ralph Fiennes) teams with war-god Ares (Edgar Ramirez) to betray brothers Zeus and Poseidon (Danny Bell) in a bid to wreak havoc and vengeance by releasing the tyrannical titan Kronos, from imprisonment.
Perseus comes out of retirement, teams with love interest Queen Andromeda (now played by Miranda Pike) and Poseidon’s own demigod son Agenor (a comic relief role played by a woefully unfunny Toby Kebell), in order to fight evil and slay viewers’ attention spans.
There’s not much more to it than that — not even enough to make Wrath an enjoyable guilty pleasure of high fantasy and elaborate action setpieces. Written by Dan Mazeau and David Leslie Johnson and directed by John Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles), it plods aimlessly through its minimalist plot and limp dialogue from one chintzy and poorly realized sequence to the next.
With nary a kraken to be released, the only fun to had with Wrath is in watching its elder statesmen — Neeson, Fiennes, and Bill Nighy (as a demented Hephaestus) — amuse themselves and each other by hamming it up big time. “Let’s have some fun, shall we?” says Zeus during the climax, as he and Hades gear up and sally forth like a pair of divine gunfighters heading for a shoot-out at the Tartarus Corral. He gets our hopes up, but by then it’s too little, too late.

Both fascinating and frustrating, the school-is-hell art-house drama Detachment is alternately shrill and sharp to an almost fatal degree. Written by Carl Lund and directed by British artist and occasional filmmaker (it’s only his second feature, the first being American History X way back in 1998), it is a potent, provocative, and sometimes effective condemnation of the public education system.
Adrien Brody gives one of his best performances in recent years as Henry Barthes, a gifted substitute teacher under emotional lockdown, haunted by his mother’s suicide during his childhood and struggling to care for a demented and dying grandfather (Louis Zorich). His latest posting is at one of the bombed-out inner city high schools so often found in movies like Dangerous Minds, Lean on Me, and Stand and Deliver, only without the hope for a better tomorrow.

Surrounded by burn-out cases, Henry is alone in the blackboard wilderness. Beleagured principal Carol Dearden (Marcia Gay Harden) is marked for scapegoating and firing by superiors who are more interested in property values than academics, and knows her time is short. The school’s guidance counselor (Lucy Liu) and exasperated teachers (memorably played by Blythe Danner, James Caan, Christina Hendricks, and Tim Blake Nelson) are all on the edge of nervous breakdowns.

Sign up for our newsletter

* indicates required

A good portion of him simply wants to escape it all; nevertheless, Henry does his best to mentor an abused overweight student (Betty Kaye, the director’s daughter), and impulsively shelters a teen prostitute (Sami Gayle). he’s a compassionate and selfless man, but also one who pulls away once the demands placed on him become too great.

A notoriously difficult button-pusher and bomb-thrower, Kaye embellishes the movie with interesting but ultimately unnecessary gimmicks — bits of animation, interview footage, and grainy flashbacks — that scream “art” with a capital “A”. Story-wise, he and Lund tend to pile on the despair and world weariness, and nearly suffocate the movie in the process. However, their comments on the frightening possibility of a generation lost to ennui and underserved sense of entitlement are sobering.