 | |
| the cover to the american re-release for the movie | . |
 |
 |
| cal mcdonold in "criminal macabre" |
basically, dylan dog is a private investigator in NOLA working chump cases like cheating husbands and what-not. but, apparently he used to be the go-to investigator for the living dead and werewolves. see, the undead select one human they can trust to "police" and investigate the ones of their kind that get out of hand. dylan betrayed that trust one day when he killed the elder vampires for revenge against his murdered fiancé. turns out, his hand was forced by a vampire, vargas, a wanna-be crime lord who used dylan to get rid of his competition.
the cast for the film includes brandon routh (superman in "superman returns") and sam huntington (jimmy olsen from "superman returns"), taye diggs as the vampire, vargas; kurt angle (the wrestler from the WWE and TNA), and peter stormare (the devil from "constantine") and every one of them does a pretty good job with their characters. peter stormare is a little unsettiling as the head of the werewolf clan, gabriel, (but what do you expect from him otherwise, right)? sam huntington is pretty damn funny as dylan's sidekick, a recently-turned-zombie named marcus. routh and huntington are great together and i've liked both of them for a few years now. i thought routh was perfect as clark kent/superman and i'm sorry he's not going to be in the new film. it's quite the bummer for me. and the times i've seen huntington in whatever TV or film role he's been in, i've enjoyed it.
 | |||
| brandon routh and sam huntington...clark and jimmy together again!! |
since i haven't read the comic, i really can't speak about the difference between that and the film. what i do know is that the comic is based in london, not new orleans and that dylan's partner is guy who dresses and acts like groucho marx more than likely because he is insane.
dylan dog was actually shot in new orleans and one of the exteriors used was a building (le pavillon hotel) that lauren and i went to a few years ago for a wedding reception. it helped set the mood and would have been disastrous had they tried to make another city "look" like NOLA.
 |
| le pavillon hotel, new orleans (used as corpus, vampire night club) |
 |
| here's me and the girl outside le pavillon. althought you can't really see it. |
the only thing that it didn't help was keeping the film from feeling disjaunted and a little choppy. there's a voice-over like in the old film noir detective movies that's supposed to help explain things but doesn't really. most of the exposition is between dylan's new client, elizabeth, and marcus, his zombie sidekick. as fun as it is to have the noir-like voice-over it just doesn't serve any other purpose than a throwback to that style. it also feels as thought they wanted the story to flow through without much exposition but the studio (or the studio) demanded some more explanation. and there is a lot going on. you have to keep track with who the werewolves are, who the vampires are, who the zombies are and each of their agendas. there are characters, such as wolfgang played by kurt angle, who are not even introduced by name so when you hear him referenced a couple of times you have no idea if dylan's talking about a guy or an actual gang of wolves! then, of course, there's the artifact that everyone's after that causes the destruction of the world and everyone pronounces it different so you have to pay attention...anyway...
i said before that the film feels "choppy". the feeling that i got was that there may have been much footage shot but a lot of it was cut to keep the story more cohesive or for time. i haven't taken a look at the special features on the DVD to see how many deleted scenes there are, yet. i'll have to research this aspect of the flick and get back to you. the director, kevin munroe, only has one other movie under his belt and that would be the animated turtles movie, "TMNT" from 2007. i don't remember much about that movie...i think i saw it...anyway, going from animated flicks to live action adaptations of italian comic books seems like quite a leap to me. this could explain some of the "choppiness". maybe munroe was just in over his head a little. then there are the screenwriters both of which have credits for "sahara", "a sound of thunder" and "conan the barbarian" (the remake or reboot or whatever) none of which rank very highly. what also worries me is that they are credited for the upcoming doctor strange movie. i hope they learn to adapt better.
regardless of inexperience or studio intervention or what-have-you, the movie just doesn't quite hit the mark. it's quirky, but too safe to be really off beat. it's funny, but not enough to be a comedy. it's dark, but not dark enough. the movie wanted to be a quirky cult movie based on a quirky cult comic but they played it too safe and tried to appeal to the masses instead of the dark-minded horror/comedy fans that would have embraced it otherwise.
overall, i have to say that i liked the movie in spite of itself. brandon routh is a good guy and i hope that he finds that franchise that was stolen from him with superman but this movie ain't it. the movie was good enough to rent, but i probably won't spend my hard earned moola on a DVD unless there's some sort of mega director's cut.
bottomline:
2.5 outta 5
No comments:
Post a Comment