The Wolfman Movie Review
The Wolfman Movie Review
Lycanthropic lore & lots of gore.
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Academy Award winning makeup effects artist Rick Baker says he never lobbied for a job before, but when he heard The Wolfman was being remade he just had to be a part of it. As a kid, he watched the 1941 original starring Lon Chaney, Jr., repeatedly, dressed up as werewolves for Halloween, and started honing his hair-laying craft before he was out of grade school. Actor Benicio Del Toro grew up loving all the Universal Monsters classics, especially Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. The two make a great team, but there is more to the action extravaganza than werewolf transformations and wicked throat-tearings.
There are actually some nice little nuances in the film; a few quiet interludes which speak volumes. "You killed my mother," sighs a beaten, cursed, and condemned Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro). This is in a dark and dingy cell, and said to his father, nobleman Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins). Father replies, bemusedly, as if just realizing it for the first time, "I suppose I did." Just four words, but Hopkins puts an entire lifetime and backstory into them. Hopkins, while excellent in the period supernatural drama Dracula several years back as Van Helsing the Vampire Hunter, is more 1800s-style Hannibal Lecter here in The Wolfman. While Hopkins does quietly steal the show with understated and predator-like nuances, Del Toro is as excellent as everyone expected he would be as the tortured hero, Talbot.
The story, told in a linear and old fashioned, straightforward filmmaking style, follows the downfall of thespian Lawrence after he's called home to England from an engagement in America. He receives an urgent letter from his brother's fiancée, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt), mysteriously requesting his help, and off he goes. Lawrence arrives in Blackmoor, soon to discover that not only is his brother missing but there have been several vicious, brutal and completely mysterious attacks on people and animals occurring around his family estate. Scotland Yard inspector Francis Aberline (Hugo Weaving) has come to investigate, but Lawrence learns that when it comes to this case he has inborn investigative skills no mortal can compete with.
I have, of course, seen the original and subsequent classic Universal werewolf films, and I've got to say, this new incarnation should please the core fans in that it's not overly innovative or modernized — for instance, it's not comparable to the other recent big-budget period piece redo, Sherlock Holmes. That movie was hip, and super-stylized. The Wolfman is indeed updated with lots of CGI and ultramodern makeup effects but when it comes right down to the storytelling style, it's as talky and almost as pedestrian as those old black and white movies. That's not a bad thing, but I think younger viewers may be expecting a lot more action from the git-go. There is action, but it builds. And the scenes in which there are werewolf attacks, they're exhilarating — and more violent and gory than parents (in spite of the film's R rating) might expect.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson