Starring: Benicio Del Torro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving
Rated: R for bloody horror violence and gore
In the 1940s, the appearnce of Lon Chaney in wolf makeup scared the living day lights out of people. In attempt to remake the film Wolfman, director Joe Johnston turns to a different tactic to startle his audience: gore. The wolfman’s dismemberment of everyone in his sight is grotesque and over the top, but hardly scary. Johnston is so convinced that his tactic will work, however, that he ignores the stale script (“Lawrence, you know me! It’s Gwen!”) and the sad performances by the great cast. Del Torro, who plays the man cursed with turning into a werewolf, is simply the worst. Trying to pass his Latino look and American accent as British is as bad as Charleton Heston playing a Mexican in Touch of Evil. (Why was Del Torro cast? Maybe because he also produced the movie.) One can tell that Del Torro is more comfortable in wolf makeup than in human form, and one can understand why; his human character is a shell, something that fills pages between monster attacks. You feel sorry for him, as well as Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving (the best in this sorry film) and Anthony Hopkins, who all must have known that their characters and performances will be overshadowed by an enormous amount of blood and guts. In fact, the gore in the film is so over the top, one becomes completely numb to it, which is actually more frightening than the film, itself. At one point during this awful movie, Anthony Hopkins says “you’ve done terrible things, Lawrence.” One could say the same about director Joe Johnston.
No comments:
Post a Comment