Warcraft ** (2016, Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell, Robert Kazinsky) – Movie Review

Let battle commence as 10-ft murderously ferocious orc warriors fleeing their dying home to colonise another world invade the land of Azeroth as a portal opens to connect the two worlds.

This epic fantasy is all about the hard awesome action and looking amazing, with the motion capture and CGI brilliant. That’s what the fans are looking for and that’s what director Duncan Jones delivers.

However, it feels very Lord of the Ringsy generic, both visually and as fantasy story-telling. And there’s the usual trouble of a movie based on a video game with not much of a story, and daft-named characters and daft dialogue that are evidently giving the moderate actors a hard time. Thin though it is, Jones’s co-written screenplay (with Charles Leavitt) is hard to follow for those not verses in Warcraft lore. The story and characters are by Chris Metzen.

Underplaying manfully though dangerously, Australian hunk Travis Fimmel (Ragnar in TV’s Vikings) makes the dullest of heroes as Anduin Lothar. But Dominic Cooper is much worse as a most unroyal king, Llane Wrynn, stuck with a modern style and a London accent, while Toby Kebbell’s Durotan is nondescript and Ben Foster’s wizardly, Merlin-style Medivh is just peculiar and creepy. However, Robert Kazinsky’s Orgrim is a convincing, suitably ferocious villain, while Ruth Negga’s Lady Taria impresses and Paula Patton’s Garona is striking.

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