I just saw this movie last weekend and being a fan of the horror genre, I thought I’d give you my thoughts. First off I want to say that I liked it for 2 main reasons. One reason was the director, Timur Bekmambetov, whose credits include, ‘Night Watch’, ‘Day Watch’ (both done in his native Russia), and ‘Wanted.’ He concocts the most crazy action sequences that alter time and reality. If you haven’t seen any of his movies you should just to admire these scenes. The second reason was Abraham Lincoln himself or rather the actor portraying him, Benjamin Walker. Walker was a perfect choice, he plays Lincoln with a earnest and kind demeanor and he has the size to make formidable in his scenes battling the undead. For such a ridiculous premise, he makes Lincoln believable and mythic at the same time.
Image copyright 20th Century Fox
Ok, now I will rattle off the good and the bad points about the rest of the movie, keeping spoilers to a minimum.
The good:
The story, I thought it was a clever mashup to tie vampires to the Civil War, it seems so obvious that they would have been fans of slavery.
I found Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Ramona from ‘Scott Pilgrim’) to be a charming Mary Todd.
Wonderful sets and production values, and the night scenes were really cool (especially in 3D).
The action scenes – amazing.
The bad:
Yet another vampire movie that changes most of the vampire ‘rules’, the worst being that vampires cannot kill another vampire, whaaaat?
The vampires themselves, no real good evil vamp, the leader played by Rufus Sewell, wasn’t nasty enough, we could have really used Jason Isaacs for this one.
The terrible editing. The story was very choppy with no flow. For instance, one minute Mary Todd was engaged to Stephen A. Douglas (played by Alan Tudyk, of ‘Firefly’ and ‘Dollhouse’) and the next Abe is proposing to her. Since Tudyk was barely seen I imagine most of his scenes were edited out.
But all and all I did enjoy it but the problems kept it from being a great movie. It’s rated ‘R’ so not good for the kiddies.
Final score: 7 out of 10.
I thought posting this review today was appropriate, Happy Fourth everyone!
