Monday, 19 November 2012

Cinema Review: Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter


The title is all that you need to know about this movie.

The really daft premise, coming from Seth Graham Smith who sold millions of copies writing “Pride & prejudice & zombies” so maybe he is into something, it’s the real deal breaker here.
Maybe there is a way to develop it sensibly and coherently but it never happened here, instead we got an incredibly dumb plot which not only is completely unrelated to any sensible history of the period, is also completely missing any internal coherence.
Maybe it’s because I know a thing or two about history but normally I don’t care too much about historical accuracy. Plot and fun are much more important. The problems start when the inaccuracies are so blatant that I can’t pretend I’m not seeing them, when very important plot junctions are decided with ploys that are nominally astute but in reality doesn’t make any sense.
If it was at least fun it could be all forgivable but instead we got some of the dumbest stuff ever. I normally don’t spoil anything of the movie but it’s really obvious that Lincoln somehow ends up hunting vampires. He acquires incredible fighting skills with which he can single handedly defeat dozens of vampires. The secret of his supernatural haste and strength? None other than the power of truth! He is super powerful because he is Honest Abe!
Even little kids deserve something better thought out.
The director is Timur Bekmambetov, who made the incredible “Wanted” in 2008, and so the fandom had very high hopes for this one. Sadly the failure is not limited to the plot.
While some of the action scenes bear the trademark blend of insane kinetic fights and crazy concept the rest of the movie is marred by the oh so American reverence for Lincoln.
I understand that he is one of the patron saints of American democracy but you can’t picture Lincoln straight while doing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. What you get this way is a movie grinding to a halt every single time Lincoln open his mouth. It gets so so boring.
At least we still got the very underrated Rufus Sewell as the main bad guy.
Conclusion: A so bad it is good movie, good train wreck value.

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