Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter Review
Entertaining, but if you read the book you might have an axe to grind with this adaptation.
Sorry I couldn’t resist it. The fact is I have been looking forward to this movie for a while, and during the last few months getting annoyed at fellow movie audience members who laughed at the trailers. Unfortunately they were for the most part correct to laugh as a lot of this movie was fairly comical in it’s need to suspend disbelief. However, if you can raise that disbelief to airline cruising altitude there is a lot worth watching here.
I read the book two weeks ago on my flight to Italy and enjoyed it a great deal. It tells of the secret life of Abraham Lincoln and his quest to rid America of the bloodsucking scourge of vampires. It was very clever and well done, with the vampire elements integrated into a broader story making for a cool, innovative retelling of his life while remaining grounded as much as possible in the actual events from American history. The action seemed realistic, with Lincoln developing his vampire hunting skills over a lifetime and coming up with many clever tools and tricks to make up for his human frailties and the strength and quickness of the vampires.
Tragically this movie took all that, wadded it into a ball, and tossed it into the nearest garbage bin. The story is devolved into the simplest of vampire stories, Abe himself is turned into a male Buffy the Vampire slayer with the speed, skill, strength, and reaction time of ten men, and no attempt is made at all to link the story to the historical events. (Buffy staked Edward image courtesy of the Horror Movie t shirt category)
However, the question that can easily be asked at this point is “What were you expecting, Dave?” Hollywood has shown little to no interest in creating clever, interesting stories or perhaps improving upon the general knowledge of the unwashed masses they cater to so why should this movie be an exception? The fact is if you put the words “vampire” and “hunter” (slayer) in the same sentence the Brownian mentality of the movie going population immediately thinks of Buffy, so you might as well use it as your source material.
I will give massive props to this movie (and the book) for portraying vampires as they should be; arrogant, evil bloodsucking bastards who should be exterminated without mercy. The ugly trend towards pretty, “nice” romantic vampires that started with Interview with a Vampire and continues to plague us with the whole Twilight series (I refuse to call it a saga) has to be stopped somehow. While these vampires managed to not burst into flame in the sun, at least they made concessions towards the fact that the sun hurts them.
The major thing that burdens this movie more than any other is the mind numbing ridiculousness of a lot of the action. I understand the need for suspension of disbelief, but the action sequences here becomes literally laughable. The action also has the problem of obscuring the action. Quick cuts and jumbled scenes of people dressed in similar colors turns a lot of the action sequences into a kaleidoscope-like morass of brown and black shapes. Very hard to follow. Multiple times I found myself asking “What the hell just happened?”, which is rarely a good thing for a movie.
The story is of course of Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker-Flags of Our Fathers, War Boys, Kinsey) and his secret life as a vampire hunter. He starts young with the death of his mother at the fangs of a vampire. When he turns into a young man he goes after the vamp who did it but gets his ass more or less kicked. He is rescued by Henry (Dominic Cooper-Captain America-the First Avenger, the Duchess, an Education), who trains him to fight vampires. Abe takes the axe as his weapon of choice and turns into a samurai warrior with it. He goes out killing vampires at the bequest of Henry and meets his wife Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead-the Thing, Scott Pilgrim vrs the World, Final Destination 3). He dedicates his life to destroying vampires by removing their easiest food source, slaves. Eventually he ends up as president and has to fight against the South, who are aided and abetted by the vampires.
The stars. Very cool concept. One star. I thought Dominic Cooper was pretty good as Honest Abe. One star. Evil vampires. One star. The period scenery was very good and accurate. One star. I loved the book. One star. Pacing was good. One star. Generally entertaining as long as you can dumb your brain down a bit. Two stars. Total: eight stars.
The black holes. They took a cool, subtle story with strong ties to actual history and dumbed it down to a cheesy Hollywood action movie. One black hole. They also PC’d the hell out of it. In the book the slavery issue, while important, was only one piece of a much bigger story. In this one it was the end all and be all of the movie. They also forced in a black supporting character who looked and felt like they crowbarred him in for political correctness. One black hole. The action, which for most of the movie was kind of dopey, fell off the Great Dopey Cliff into Never Ending Valley of Stupidity towards the end (the train ride was really, really dumb). One black hole. Speaking of crowbarring, the managed to shove in Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad for no apparent reason other than to try to look more correct. It all felt awkwardly out of place and had nothing to do with the book or history. One black hole. The movie in general suffered from the problem of trying to fit an entire lifetime of vampire hunting and politicking (which was all well done in the book) into 105 minutes, and honestly it felt like you were watching a 4 hour movie but skipping ahead by five minute increments periodically. One black hole. At some point you have to ask yourself does the President of the United States not have soldiers and guards he could call on, or does he really have to play security guard more or less solo on a train? One black hole. Total: six black holes.
Sigh. Only two stars total, and to be honest I was being kind on a few of them. Another movie I really wanted to be better. It’s not terrible. In fact, it’s entirely worth watching on a big screen and looks like it would even benefit from 3D. It’s just that based on the source material I think it could have been much better. Almost to the point of being a classic. Instead it’s just another Tim Burton movie (think Sleepy Hollow). Date movie? Meh. You won’t lose anything on this but there is nothing in here terrifying, surprising, or interesting enough to really turn a girl on IMO. Bathroom break? The whole Lincoln/Mary romance could be missed without losing anything. The formal dance where they start to fall in love is an excellent place to void your fluids.
Thanks for reading. I am going to go see Rock of Ages later tonight, so have pity on me. It should really suck. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Post comments on this movie or review here, and if you have off topic questions or suggestions feel free to email me at [email protected].
Thanks again. Have a great night, and look for a review on that rock movie tomorrow.
Dave
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