Movie Review: The Wolfman
Well, when I’ve got it in my head to see a movie, I rarely let the reviews dissuade me. After all, I don’t see eye to eye with all reviewers all the time…actually, I probably disagree with them more times than not. This particular time, though, the reviews were bad…and they were right. Wolfman isn’t unwatchable, but it’s not great. It’s predictable, for one thing. You know what you’re getting: a Victorian era piece with everyone trying to speak in English accents, some of them more successfully than others. Basically, what you’re in for with Wolfman is a bit of every monster movie cliche of the past twenty years. Think Wolf, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (which also featured Anthony Hopkins), Sleepy Hollow, and even a bit of King Kong, and you’re on the right track. Benicio Del Toro returns to Blackwood, England around the turn of the nineteenth century, when his brother turns up eviscerated. The townspeople blame the gypsies, the gypsies blame a demonic, possibly mythical monster. Hopkins, as Del Toro’s father, seems to know more than he’s letting on. We get some flashbacks to Del Toro’s childhood, much like with Johnny Depp’s character in Sleepy Hollow, and before long he is bitten by the werewolf, at which point the rest of the plot progresses much like the Jack Nicholson movie, Wolf, with about the same quality of special effects. It’s all woods, mores, and mist; if these sorts of movies are to be believed, England is always just swimming in mist, all night, every night. Hugo Weaving (Elrond in the Lord of the Rings, Mr. Smith in the Matrix trilogy), shows up as Inspector Abeline, from Scotland yard, strange, since he died at the end of the Hughes brothers’ film From Hell, but whatever, throw him in the mix too, why not. We know what’s coming, the revelation of an “evil” werewolf vs Del Toro’s conflicted version, the showdown between the two mangy mutts, and the all too familiar question of whether he can be saved, particularly with the help of his dead brother’s fiance. Spoiler alert: he can’t be, and it’s just as well, because even a gifted actor like Del Toro can’t save this one-dimensional character, or this one-dimensional movie, for that matter. His death scene is simply laughable, where they were looking for dramatic.
This movie is another example of talented actors (Hopkins and Del Toro are both former Oscars winners), signing onto a movie more for the paycheck than the script. They do their best, with Del Toro snarling and frothing and Hopkins hamming it up as he can be relied on to do, but we’ve seen too many elements of this film before; like the last film I reviewed, Avatar, this seems cobbled together from plot points featured in other movies of the genre, and there isn’t anything original or unexpected to raise the overall quality. At least with Avatar I was able to enjoy the color and movement of the lush alien world, Pandora. Here we just get soggy, boggy England and ash gray skies, with some mangy dogs running around that vaguely resemble respectable actors. My rating: 4/10.