Chances are that you’ve already made up your mind about this film when you read its title. You’ll either facepalm at the sacrilege of turning one of history’s greatest men into something base and tasteless, or you’ll laugh your behind off. Regardless of your reaction, the film may surprise you. Director Timur Bekmanbetov has proven himself to be a master of orchestrating scenes of absurdity and chaos, with beautiful and awe-inspiring action scenes, and with serious demeanor. He does the same here, orchestrating the absurdity with a straight face and plenty of style to satisfy.
After “Wanted,” a film so loaded with fantastic action sequences, I was hoping Bekmanbetov would deliver a plethora of inspiring new setpieces. Such scenes are few and far-between in “AL:VH;” there are plenty of short fights with lots of style and lots of gnarly bloody mayhem, all captured in flowing slow-motion photography. The biggest standouts will be the horse stampede scene, which somewhat resembles a crazy car-chase scene that swaps out the cars with horses and sends horses flying off in all directions (a very clever and inspiring scene, in my opinion, which is sadly marred by some camera shake and lots of dust on the screen), and the climactic train battle, which will likely be compared to the train scene in “Wanted,” but I feel it’s a solid stand-alone setpiece. In terms of action, the film delivers; it’s still the director’s tamest and sanest work, but what we get would be something comparable to an “Underworld” movie.
The story for this madness is generally sound, believe it or not. Regardless of how you accept the idea that Abe slays the undead in his off-hours, the film does a fine job of weaving historical accounts and personal history in with the vampire storyline. I’m no Lincoln expert, so I don’t really know how much of the film is accurate (I certainly don’t know how well it adapts the original novel). Accepting it as its own little universe, I felt it was generally successful. Half of it does a good job of setting up the vampire story and the other half does a good of playing out the period drama, all in an earnest manner.
If there is any problem with the story, it would be in its consistency; the opening scenes whiz by really fast, before settling into a steady and pleasing pace during Abe’s youth. The story then zips through entire years of the story, lightly covering the Civil War aspect and speeding it up to the climax. It’s very choppy, uneven pacing; I suspect that 30-60 more minutes of scenes would have allowed the story to breathe, allowing the pacing to flow naturally and make the film even more epic than it is. What we get feels like an abridged telling of the overall story.
The film definitely has style. The camera work can be a little shakey in some scenes, but there are also a lot of moments with slick slow-motion photography. There are quite a few unique editing effects. Acting is generally not bad; I grew to accept Benjamin Walker as the title character, for he looked and acted the part very well. Writing is not terribly strong, but it gets the job done. This production has decent-looking sets, props, and costumes. As one other reviewer pointed out, however, the makeup department failed to make certain characters age the way Lincoln does, and it can be distracting. Music for this movie has some really awesome parts.
There could have been more to the film: more crazy action, more to the Civil War scenes, more consistency to the plot, etc. Still, if you’re looking for stylish vampire-slaying action like I am, the film generally satisfies. I probably wouldn’t recommend this to anybody looking for perfect cinema, or anybody who can’t accept the premise of the film’s title. For everybody else, I’d recommend checking it out as a rental.
3.5/5 (Entertainment: Good | Story: Average | Film: Pretty Good)
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