It should come as no surprise to learn that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is neither as good nor as bad as its laugh-out-loud trailer
suggests. On the plus side, it's nowhere near as terrible as the
all-title-no-trousers catastrophe of Cowboys & Aliens, a movie so
awful that even the head of the studio that made it labelled it
"crappy". On the downside, despite the Spinal Tap maxim that there's a
very thin line between clever and stupid, this sometimes proves that
there's an even thinner line between stupid and just plain dumb.
Sunday, 30 December 2012
Friday, 28 December 2012
Thursday, 27 December 2012
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter movie cast and crew
Directed by
Timur Bekmambetov
Benjamin Walker
Dominic Cooper
Anthony Mackie
Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Rufus Sewell
Marton Csokas
Jimmi Simpson
Joseph Mawle
Robin McLeavy
Erin Wasson
John Rothman
Cameron M. Brown
Timur Bekmambetov
Benjamin Walker
Dominic Cooper
Anthony Mackie
Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Rufus Sewell
Marton Csokas
Jimmi Simpson
Joseph Mawle
Robin McLeavy
Erin Wasson
John Rothman
Cameron M. Brown
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter movie overview
It should come as no surprise to learn that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is neither as good nor as bad as its laugh-out-loud trailer suggests. On the plus side, it's nowhere near as terrible as the all-title-no-trousers catastrophe of Cowboys & Aliens, a movie so awful that even the head of the studio that made it labelled it "crappy". On the downside, despite the Spinal Tap maxim that there's a very thin line between clever and stupid, this sometimes proves that there's an even thinner line between stupid and just plain dumb.
Adapted by screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith (author of the bestselling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) from his own novel, this splattershot romp recasts America's 16th president as a heroic Van Helsing figure whose hatred of slavery dovetails neatly with a lust for vengeance upon the bloodsuckers who killed his mother. Having suffered exactly the kind of early-life traumas required of superheroes (parental loss, financial hardships, injustice witnessed first-hand) poor-boy Abe (Benjamin Walker) goes on to save the nation with a facial hair-and-hat arrangement every bit as distinctive as Batman's cowl or Superman's cape.
At the centre of all this jolly nonsense is a promising premise about abolitionists fighting vampires in a culture wherein the slave trade turns people into raw meat, and in which the sight of rich white Southerners feasting upon their poor black prey ("Dinner is served!") is a fleetingly chilling high point. Yet all too often that solid central thread gets lost amid a whirligig of stop-go axe-swinging (Abe's trademark weapon of choice) and ambitiously ludicrous fight scenes. Narrative has never been the strong point of Russian-Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov, whose fondness for weightlessly explosive digital FX (a punch-up amid a stampede, a train on a burning bridge, neither encumbered by any sense of actual danger) habitually overshadows simple storytelling. And while this may not actually be based on a comic-book, it still suffers from the worst traits of those disappointing graphic novel adaptations that regularly mistake freeze-frame storyboard surface for substance. As for Grahame-Smith, even seasoned director Tim Burton (who acts as producer here) struggled to make sense of his wildly uneven and episodic script for Dark Shadows, and while lines such as "Hurry up, we don't want to be late for the play!" may be played for laughs, it's unclear whether the same is true of clunkers like "This first day of Gettysburg has been a disaster!"
With so much wrong, then, what's actually right about ALVH? Well, in terms of genre historical revisionism it's a lot more entertaining than the head-banging tedium of Jonah Hex, which somehow managed to make civil war zombies deadly dull, despite much scenery chewing from John Malkovich and a climax featuring steampunk warships aiming weapons of mass destruction at the White House. It's also, for all its narrative flaws, still less incoherent than either of Bekmambetov's previous "monsters among us" outings – Nightwatch and Daywatch – and closer to the director's adaptation of Mark Millar and JG Jones's comic strip Wanted in terms of sheer thrilling silliness.
En route to Gettysburg, silvery ideas are filched magpie-like from sources as diverse as Kim Newman's respected novel Anno Dracula and Patrick Lussier's derided film Dracula 2000, with fantasy horror remaining the one area in which eating your genre entrails in public is not considered impolite. With expectations high for Spielberg's forthcoming Lincoln, Bekmambetov's disposable brouhaha at least achieves the minor victory of living neither up to hopes nor down to fears. Whether it leaves enough life in the walking corpse of the "mash-up" genre to justify a long-promised movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, however, remains a moot point.
Adapted by screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith (author of the bestselling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) from his own novel, this splattershot romp recasts America's 16th president as a heroic Van Helsing figure whose hatred of slavery dovetails neatly with a lust for vengeance upon the bloodsuckers who killed his mother. Having suffered exactly the kind of early-life traumas required of superheroes (parental loss, financial hardships, injustice witnessed first-hand) poor-boy Abe (Benjamin Walker) goes on to save the nation with a facial hair-and-hat arrangement every bit as distinctive as Batman's cowl or Superman's cape.
At the centre of all this jolly nonsense is a promising premise about abolitionists fighting vampires in a culture wherein the slave trade turns people into raw meat, and in which the sight of rich white Southerners feasting upon their poor black prey ("Dinner is served!") is a fleetingly chilling high point. Yet all too often that solid central thread gets lost amid a whirligig of stop-go axe-swinging (Abe's trademark weapon of choice) and ambitiously ludicrous fight scenes. Narrative has never been the strong point of Russian-Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov, whose fondness for weightlessly explosive digital FX (a punch-up amid a stampede, a train on a burning bridge, neither encumbered by any sense of actual danger) habitually overshadows simple storytelling. And while this may not actually be based on a comic-book, it still suffers from the worst traits of those disappointing graphic novel adaptations that regularly mistake freeze-frame storyboard surface for substance. As for Grahame-Smith, even seasoned director Tim Burton (who acts as producer here) struggled to make sense of his wildly uneven and episodic script for Dark Shadows, and while lines such as "Hurry up, we don't want to be late for the play!" may be played for laughs, it's unclear whether the same is true of clunkers like "This first day of Gettysburg has been a disaster!"
With so much wrong, then, what's actually right about ALVH? Well, in terms of genre historical revisionism it's a lot more entertaining than the head-banging tedium of Jonah Hex, which somehow managed to make civil war zombies deadly dull, despite much scenery chewing from John Malkovich and a climax featuring steampunk warships aiming weapons of mass destruction at the White House. It's also, for all its narrative flaws, still less incoherent than either of Bekmambetov's previous "monsters among us" outings – Nightwatch and Daywatch – and closer to the director's adaptation of Mark Millar and JG Jones's comic strip Wanted in terms of sheer thrilling silliness.
En route to Gettysburg, silvery ideas are filched magpie-like from sources as diverse as Kim Newman's respected novel Anno Dracula and Patrick Lussier's derided film Dracula 2000, with fantasy horror remaining the one area in which eating your genre entrails in public is not considered impolite. With expectations high for Spielberg's forthcoming Lincoln, Bekmambetov's disposable brouhaha at least achieves the minor victory of living neither up to hopes nor down to fears. Whether it leaves enough life in the walking corpse of the "mash-up" genre to justify a long-promised movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, however, remains a moot point.
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter movie review
Having never seen Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter before this Blu-ray screening, everything I'd heard about the film mentioned the fact that the writer Seth Grahame-Smith (Dark Shadows) and director Timur Bekmambetov (Day Watch, Wanted) made the wrong choice when they decided to unapologetically play this story straight. Still, it was a bold creative choice and I'll always be a fan of a movie that goes "all-in" than one that teeters in the middle and tries to be everything to everyone.
It was even apparent just from watching the trailer for the film that the stuff that landed on screen didn't quite mesh with its own almost-parodic title. And that there are just certain moments in history that, no matter the earnestness of intention, are too big and nation-defining to be able to successfully accentuate after the addition of vampires. As if to say that what Lincoln did, on his own as a Congressman and then as our 16th President, wasn't legendary enough for our own lore. That he actually had to physically get in there himself and, with the help of some wire work and bullet time, shove his axe down a bunch of vampire confederates' throats. Bottom line: This was just a hard story to pull off without making a revered man laughable.
That being said, I kind of just went along for the ride and didn't wind up resenting it as much as everyone told me I would. Almost playing like a "former gangster tries to go legit" story, I found that this movie did have a slight perverness too it. I mean, any film that actually has a scene that intercuts Lincoln's Gettysburg address with Union soldiers mutilating vampires with bayonets made of silver definitely has a substantial amount of bats in its belfry. Plus, I came out of the movie realizing that I don't think I would have appreciated it any better had it been played for laughs. As hard as it is to believe, I think the unintentional laughs kind of make this movie. The Linkin Park song at the end does nobody any favors though. Now that's satire.
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Benjamin Walker, who, depending on the lighting, looks either like a young Liam Neeson or a right-now Ken Marino, did a fine job at playing a "through the years" Lincoln, goofy aging prosthetics and all. Running down the rest of the cast, and the characters they play, is a dangerous game in itself since by the time I get to Abe's African-American friend Will, who battles bloodsuckers with his expert capoeira skills, you're going to start to snicker again. Because some of it gets really close to the Priest in Peter Jackson's Dead Alive who starts kung-fu'ing the hell out of zombies screaming "I kick ass for the Lord!"
I didn't get a chance to see the movie in 3D obviously, and I am curious to know how it played. The action sequences here were pretty good and I'd be interested to know how it all looked, with the 3D, at night. Since, you know, most of this movie is very dark and/or very blue. The 2:40:1 transfer looks fantastic and despite the fact that the story does its fair share of lurking in the shadows, everything comes off crisp and clear. The DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 is also pretty spectacular here, proving that there truly is nothing subtle about this historical-actioner.
The extras here are fine. There aren't many of them, but then I have to ask myself "what more do I really want/need?" There's commentary from Grahame-Smith, who, having written the novel, is an excellent got-to person for the entire book-to-film journey, but also someone who's not afraid to admit to a few missteps here and there; including the final showdown between Abe and Rufus Sewell's Adam. The "Making of" featurette is quite expansive and quite, well, exhausting. It's a lot. Over an hour. But let it be noted that no stone was left unturned or creative process left unexplored. What's left after that is an animated short, featuring Abe talking to Edgar Allen Poe about Euro-vamps, and a Linkin Park music video that I'm pretty sure is, and will forever be, the least watched extra of the set.
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As mentioned, I enjoyed Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunters more than I thought I would. Maybe even more than I should have. Explaining away one of our country's darkest eras as being the result of vampires (i.e. the South was pro-slavery because slave-craving vamps had built a clandestine empire) sort of lets humanity off the hook in a way I'm not too comfortable with, but the movie flows well, even if it also glosses over Lincoln's important political maneuvers. It's never explained how Abe is actually able to be taught to fight with the strength and agility of a vampire when he's not one himself, and wasn't even per-destined, or prophetically chosen, to be a hunter. Despite all the reviews that maligned this film for not being silly enough, this is a damn silly movie.
It was even apparent just from watching the trailer for the film that the stuff that landed on screen didn't quite mesh with its own almost-parodic title. And that there are just certain moments in history that, no matter the earnestness of intention, are too big and nation-defining to be able to successfully accentuate after the addition of vampires. As if to say that what Lincoln did, on his own as a Congressman and then as our 16th President, wasn't legendary enough for our own lore. That he actually had to physically get in there himself and, with the help of some wire work and bullet time, shove his axe down a bunch of vampire confederates' throats. Bottom line: This was just a hard story to pull off without making a revered man laughable.
That being said, I kind of just went along for the ride and didn't wind up resenting it as much as everyone told me I would. Almost playing like a "former gangster tries to go legit" story, I found that this movie did have a slight perverness too it. I mean, any film that actually has a scene that intercuts Lincoln's Gettysburg address with Union soldiers mutilating vampires with bayonets made of silver definitely has a substantial amount of bats in its belfry. Plus, I came out of the movie realizing that I don't think I would have appreciated it any better had it been played for laughs. As hard as it is to believe, I think the unintentional laughs kind of make this movie. The Linkin Park song at the end does nobody any favors though. Now that's satire.
Benjamin Walker, who, depending on the lighting, looks either like a young Liam Neeson or a right-now Ken Marino, did a fine job at playing a "through the years" Lincoln, goofy aging prosthetics and all. Running down the rest of the cast, and the characters they play, is a dangerous game in itself since by the time I get to Abe's African-American friend Will, who battles bloodsuckers with his expert capoeira skills, you're going to start to snicker again. Because some of it gets really close to the Priest in Peter Jackson's Dead Alive who starts kung-fu'ing the hell out of zombies screaming "I kick ass for the Lord!"
I didn't get a chance to see the movie in 3D obviously, and I am curious to know how it played. The action sequences here were pretty good and I'd be interested to know how it all looked, with the 3D, at night. Since, you know, most of this movie is very dark and/or very blue. The 2:40:1 transfer looks fantastic and despite the fact that the story does its fair share of lurking in the shadows, everything comes off crisp and clear. The DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 is also pretty spectacular here, proving that there truly is nothing subtle about this historical-actioner.
The extras here are fine. There aren't many of them, but then I have to ask myself "what more do I really want/need?" There's commentary from Grahame-Smith, who, having written the novel, is an excellent got-to person for the entire book-to-film journey, but also someone who's not afraid to admit to a few missteps here and there; including the final showdown between Abe and Rufus Sewell's Adam. The "Making of" featurette is quite expansive and quite, well, exhausting. It's a lot. Over an hour. But let it be noted that no stone was left unturned or creative process left unexplored. What's left after that is an animated short, featuring Abe talking to Edgar Allen Poe about Euro-vamps, and a Linkin Park music video that I'm pretty sure is, and will forever be, the least watched extra of the set.
As mentioned, I enjoyed Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunters more than I thought I would. Maybe even more than I should have. Explaining away one of our country's darkest eras as being the result of vampires (i.e. the South was pro-slavery because slave-craving vamps had built a clandestine empire) sort of lets humanity off the hook in a way I'm not too comfortable with, but the movie flows well, even if it also glosses over Lincoln's important political maneuvers. It's never explained how Abe is actually able to be taught to fight with the strength and agility of a vampire when he's not one himself, and wasn't even per-destined, or prophetically chosen, to be a hunter. Despite all the reviews that maligned this film for not being silly enough, this is a damn silly movie.
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