Epic changes

Beowulf takes clever liberties with the classic tale and is ambivalent toward the dawn of Christendom | Sam Thielman

As a reward for his heroism, the Viking hero Beowulf (Winstone, left) is offered a precious gift by the grateful King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins)

It's probably foolish to expect the new Beowulf to be a respite from this film season's unremitting violence, but since the movie is PG-13 and a CGI cartoon, one might be forgiven for hoping so. Sorry, Ratatouille it ain't. Beowulf earned its rating for "intense sequences of violence" in addition to some sexual material and nudity. The violence is all computer-created, but try telling that to your stomach.

Unlike the video games it so strongly resembles, though, Beowulf is both complex and knowledgeable, retooling the life of Beowulf (a de-paunched, re-cheekboned Ray Winstone) with a number of structural twists that never quite contradict the poem, but take clever liberties with it instead. It's at least the third time screenwriter Neil Gaiman has told the story (once in the jokey Hollywood-mocking poem "Bay Wolf," once in his novella, "The Monarch of the Glen"), and he keeps finding new things to say.