ABRAHAM LINCOLN VAMPIRE HUNTER Review: It's Ridiculous Fun!
- Details
- Category: New Series and Movie Reviews
- Published: Friday, 22 June 2012 16:07
- Written by Lupe Haas
A wild premise and outlandish action stunts equals ridiculous fun at the movies with ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER. In the hands of any other director, VAMPIRE HUNTER could've been a mess, but Timur Bekmambetov pulled off a very entertaining movie that requires the viewer to suspend belief in a big way.
Turns out honest Abe wasn't so forthcoming with his extracurricular activities before and during his presidency. In ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, the 16th president of the United States fought crime of the vampire kind before he took office. As a boy, Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) watched a vampire take his mother's life and he vows revenge on the killer. A mysterious man (Dominic Cooper) takes Lincoln under his wings as a young adult and shows him the ways of vampire hunting. Lincoln makes it his mission to destroy the blood-suckers and starts his political campaigning as a way to bring change to the country being over-runned by the undead.
In this version of pre-civil war events, the film asserts that the slave-owning Southerners are vampires and must be stopped. Who doesn't love the recent trend of historical revenge movies? First Quentin Tarantino took on the Nazis in Inglourious Basterds and next he enacts revenge on Southerners in Django Unchained starring Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio. Coincidentally, ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER also take aim at the Southern plantation owners.
If you can get past the wild nature of ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, you'll enjoy the movie. Director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) got Hollywood's attention with his frenzied action sequences in the Russian vampire flicks Night Watch and Day Watch. ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER is no different in that the action scenes are so outlandish that they're funny in a good way. In one scene, Lincoln and a vampire fight each other during a horse stampede while jumping from horse to horse. In another clip, a horse-pulled wagon crashes through a large window and spins around like a hot-rod, reminiscent of the red car stunt in Wanted. Clearly Bekmambetov has an overactive imagination to come up with these outlandish action sequences that are beyond reality. Many in the audience including myself couldn't help, but laugh at the ridiculousness of it. However, movies are about escapism and ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER has a good time at playing up that notion.
Of course all the credit can't go to the director. Adapted from the novel of the same name by author Seth Grahame-Smith, the story makes great use of other historical figures from that period like Harriet Tubman and the underground railroad. Of course you'll only enjoy those little tidbits if you remember your high school history class.
Benjamin Walker as Abraham Lincoln proved charismatic as the well-known historical figure and looked the part. Dominic Cooper also brought his usual charm to his role as Henry Sturges.
Regarding the 3D, I'm usually not a fan of suffering from headaches, but the director made great use of it without resorting to gimmicks. He smartly used atmosphere to create this 3D universe with flying embers, floating vampire splat, and any airborne elements that had me wanting to swat the stuff from my eyes.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER is a good time at the movies and provides that escapism that's lacking in most blockbuster films.