In the four years since this movie was released I had utterly forgotten it existed. I was recently reminded of it by a stupid listical video on youtube and, seeing as I love dumb movies, I decided to give it a go. It may surprise those of you familiar with my habitual movie reviews but this one won't be a wall of text (he says confidently before he even does the review...)
Honestly: Its a good movie. Its a better movie, in fact, than it should be all things considered. What it absolutely isn't is the movie promised in the trailers.
Lets consider those 'all things' for a moment:
Its the first feature film by director Gary Shore
Its historical accuracy is more than a bit shady
Its lacking in major star power
There is a moment where Dracula bothered to change out of his leather, sleeveless armor into a bad ass trench-coat in the middle of a siege before going outside to kick all the ass.
Dracula is a superhero who kicks all the ass. Seriously: His body count for this one movie is 5419. That is not hyperbole.
So where did the marketing go wrong and where did the movie go right? How did a first time director making a stupid action flick out of motherfucking Dracula of all things, manage to get a damn good movie out of it?
Themes. Motives. Characters.
Hell: Plot
I hope I've made my opinion clear about decent writing for movies on this site over the years. Its these 'little touches' that elevate popcorn fare to something greater, its their lack that drives massive budget blockbusters (The Disney Starwars films come to mind) into the ground despite all the pretty visuals. Modern movies aren't so much written any more as assembled like a video collage, with tropes and cliches being used with no regard for what they actually mean or how the developed. Modern films, and a shocking number of books these days, seem to be more intent on delivering an impressive but forgettable fireworks display.
For all its many flaws, Dracula Untold isn't any of that. It is a story about characters, it offers up hard questions and doesn't provide easy answers. It gives us a character with flaws, who makes hard choices and lives with the consequences of those choices. Its a story about a father and a husband who is confronted with the impossible, becomes a monster to accomplish the impossible.
And so it opens and closes with narration by Vlad Dracula's son, because it has to.
There is a moment at the end of the film, just before the Coda. Dracula has turned all the survivors of his people into vampires so they can get revenge on the Turkish army of Mehmet while he rescues his son, and now that all is accomplished he lets them die (he parts the cloud cover he's summoned so the sun can kill all the vampires). During this slow motion SFX extravaganza we see one of the servant girls, a governess for his son, being embraced, comforted, by another servant girl as they are burned alive by the sun. Its a small thing, but to me it shows that the director treated even his extras as real characters, not props to be set up or knocked down solely for the 'main character'.
There is another moment, when Vlad has fled his wife rather than drink her blood when a nameless 'renfield' type shows up, where he provides in a short scene both the temptation for Dracula and probably one of the best short moments in a monster film for why someone would take that position. Its almost a throw away scene, the 'renfield' character only shows back up for the Coda to show how Dracula survived his self sacrifice, but its thoughtful.
As for flaws: The directing can be a bit ham handed with setting things up. Maybe its simply that I watch a little too closely, but there are a few bits that are 'shoved in' as obvious set ups for later. Not all of them are that bad... there is a bit with some silver coins that is masterfully subtle in an otherwise utterly unsubtle scene.
The acting is uneven. Dominic Cooper is... awful. Just fucking awful. It wouldn't be so bad if he was scenery chewing bad, but he's just... flat. Boring. And he's the bad guy. Boring badguy? Ugh. Charles Dance is criminally underutilized, given his role in the plot. Sarah Gadon is wonderful as Mirena, but then is weirdly awkward as Mina in the Coda.
The relationship with History is...
Look: If you can't be bothered with History and you just wanna make some shit up? I'm cool with that. If you want to actually bring in real history and give some gravitas to your story I'm cool with that too. This sort of if 'will he/won't he' is Alfie levels of cheating, m'kay? Dance with the one that brung ya!
Here's an odd one for ya: The Turks in the film speak in Turkish alot. All well and good. Not one actor or extra was actually Turkish. Also: Not one word of Romanian was spoken in the film, though from what I can tell by looking at the cast list they didn't exactly stock up on Wallachians for their extras either. Make of that what you will.
All in all I found it to be a surprisingly effective, emotionally moving film that brought an uneven balance of excellent visual storytelling with some ham handed directoral choices. Of all the movies I've seen from the last... call it ten years... its one of the biggest surprises in the writing department, one of the better written overall, and deserves a second look. Also: Dracula as a Superhero. What's not to love?
If you like superhero monster movies, do "I, Frankenstein " with Aaron Eckhart next ...:o
Oh god... that movie. I actually caught it in the theater. From what I DO recall about it I would have to do the entire 8+hours of Wall of Text monster-mash, not unlike I did for X-Men Apocalypse.
Still, I've been known to be wrong. I actually liked Tank Girl the first time I saw it, and now I can't get through ten minutes of it without crying in my beer... Hell, I probably would have hated DU in the theater.
Thank you Spike! I'll check it out. I remember almost seeing it, but it just slipped off my radar.
Its why I do these little reviews...