Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: ****/*****, or 7/10
A few
months ago the combination 'vampires' and 'Tim Burton' managed to
result in a flawed and disappointing movie named Dark Shadows,
despite the fact Burton initially seemed well suited for the project
due to his flair for Gothic visuals that are so commonly associated
with the vampire mythos. Various arguments could be provided as to
why the film fell short, but the haphazard script written by novelist
and screen writer Seth Grahame-Smith definitely had something do with
its lackluster performance. However, despite their failure to deliver
a fully compelling picture about a vampire waking up in the Seventies
after having been out of it for 200 years, both Grahame-Smith and
Burton apparently felt their collaboration merited a second vampire
movie on short notice, this time based on Grahame-Smith's own novel
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Obviously, a book with such a
campy title deserved an equally over-the-top movie adaptation: though
everybody who's familiar with Burton's oeuvre is well aware the man
himself might have succeeded in directing such a project, Burton
himself decided to forego the director's chair and instead hand it
over to his Russian “twin brother”, Timur Bekmambetov (the guy
behind the epic Russian Night Watch movies), who like few
others in the directing business manages to effectively balance the
camp with the cool and to combine fair amounts of utter silliness
with scenes of gripping action. Judging by how entertaining a movie
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter turned out to be, Burton
stepping down as director in favor of Bekmambetov was all for the
best.
Warning!
Spoilers! As indicated by the title, Abraham Lincoln:
Vampire Hunter simply pits
the historic character of the 16th President of the United
States against the bloodsucking living dead. The movie opens on a
young Lincoln who witnesses his mother being assaulted by a vampire
to fatal consequences, after her husband stepped in when their son
was whipped by the fiend for defending a helpless black child. Both
an aversion to slavery and a resentment towards vampires are thus
shown to be forged at a young age in our Abe, setting him on the path
towards righteousness. When he returns to avenge his mother as a
young man (now played by Benjamin Walker, a relative newcomer to
acting, but fitting the mood well enough to carry the picture), his
confrontation with the despicable Jack Barts (Marton Csokas, once
only slightly more than an extra in Lord of the Rings), a
sadistic slave trading vampire, almost ends in his own demise, but a
mysterious stranger saves him from certain death. This mystery man
named Henry Sturges (Dominic Cooper, The Devil's Double)
claims to be an experienced vampire hunter who is willing to teach
Abe the tricks of the trade, if he swears to devote his life to the
cause and not waste his time with getting attached to people in the
process. Lincoln hesitantly accepts and begins intensive training,
which allows him to detect and kill vampires, and, keeping in tone
with the levels of cheese, pull off impossible stuff like chopping
down a tree with a single stroke of his axe. After his training is
completed, on Sturges' orders he sets out to Springfield, Illinois,
to root out the vampiric presence there and dispatch as many of the
ghouls as he can with his trusted axe in a series of brief but bloody
scenes (it is a vampire movie after all!). When he meets the
beautiful Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Scott Pilgrim vs.
The World), he cannot help himself but break his word to his
mentor and become romantically involved with her. He also finally
finds and kills his nemesis Barts, who prior to his death illustrates
the fact Sturges himself is a vampire to him, leaving Lincoln to
confront his mentor and learn the truth about his reasons for making
him a vampire hunter.
As it
happens, Barts was just the tip of the iceberg. The real power behind
both vampirism and slavery is the age-old vampire known as Adam
(performed enthusiastically by Rufus Sewell, who always manages to
play convincing scumbags and makes no exception here), a wealthy
plantation owner in the South. Slavery isn't simply a way for white
people to make money over the backs of black people, it's Adam's tool
to keep his vampires in line by supplying them with ample victims to
keep them from running rampant among mankind, and of course a means
to get rich in the process and secretly transforming the young United
States of America in a free haven for vampires, run behind the scenes
by vampires, with vampires controlling the major routes of import and
export. It's an ingenious scenario, firmly connecting Lincoln's
historical campaign of abolition to his fantastical fight against
vampire tyranny. Far from being a 'land of the free', America is
rapidly deteriorating in secret into a 'land of the undead', where
black people not only provide the means of hard labour for the
comfort of their white owners, but where, in a poignant parallel,
they also provide the main food source for the creatures controlling
their white owners without their knowledge. The notion of slavery for
vampirical feeding purposes is reminiscent of the human blood banks
of the recent and excellent movie Daybreakers (2009), where
humans simply served as cattle in bio-industrial farms run by their
vampire overlords, like rows of Negroes are hung from the ceiling
upside down to be drained in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
Scenes like these reveal there's still many possible enjoyable
variations on the theme of human oppression by the living dead when
paired to distressing imagery of worthwhile social causes, be they
historical or contemporary. It would have been welcome to see an
intriguing premise like this explored in greater detail, but
Bekmambetov doesn't feel like risking the slavery theme becoming too
much of a serious issue in favor of providing us with a fun
rollercoaster ride of an action flick as Lincoln sets on his mission
to shut down Adam's business operation.
In fact,
only Lincoln can stop it, since the canonical vampire of Abraham
Lincoln: Vampire Hunter cannot
kill another vampire (though he can walk safely in the sunlight,
making it easier for him to handle his slaves). As the movie states,
only the living can kill the dead, while the dead are literally
physically unable to violently settle their differences among
themselves. As he explains to Abe, Henry tried to fight Adam but
failed, and has since resorted into training worthy humans as vampire
hunters for ages, a notion the movie repeats to great humorous
effect in its final scene as Henry is seen to recruit a man in a
present day bar the same way he recruited Lincoln back in his days
(and no, that man is not supposed to be Barack Obama, as some
overexcited audience members reading too much into this film would
have you believe, though that would have made the camp complete!).
Just like the bad vampires of the movie are living off humans, the
film's only good vampire is a parasite in his own way for having his
personal vendetta fought by humans in his stead: though in both cases
necessity is the key word, at least Henry has moral qualms about it,
making him a sympathetic double-crosser. Of course, the fact Henry
lied to Abraham to begin with makes the latter turn his back on him,
setting him off on his own path against the vampire regime – which
includes marrying Mary – leading through politics, so he abandons
the axe and turns to words instead, his rise to his historically most
famous level of political office displayed in a montage ending on the
beginning of his term as president, at which time the young, muscular
man we saw kicking vampire butt before has himself transformed into
the classic look of the older, slender built, bearded Abraham Lincoln
as we all know him. It's a credit to Walker's capabilities as an
actor to see he can carry the picture as well in his performance as
the older Lincoln, endowing him with the typical levels of gravitas
and thoughtfulness most commonly associated with the character in
both fiction and reality. By comparison, the actors playing vampires
have it much easier, since they can go on playing the same character
with the same motivations and character traits, not burdened by
prosthetics and similar aging make-up, or fake beards. Walker plays
the shift in Lincoln's character, both physically and mentally, with
a subtlety one would not expect from an action oriented movie like
this.
Of
course Lincoln's actions against slavery – and thus, the vampires'
food source – don't sit well with the ruthless Adam, who turns the
South against him, with the argument abolition would severely weaken
the slaving states economically. And so the American Civil War erupts
for the same apparent reasons as it did in reality, but with a hidden
agenda governing the upper echelons of both parties. However, amidst
all the bloodshed of the battle field, vampires do not need to hide
as much as usual, as Adam releases scores of vampire soldiers upon
the armies of the North, threatening to balance the war in the favour
of the South. Lincoln retaliates by ordering all silver of the
Northern states to be collected and melted down as bullets and
cannonballs to supply his troops with weapons capable of killing
vampires as well as humans. Silver as always remains the weapon of
choice against vampires – Abe's axe blade was dipped in silver too
– and the last act of the movie thus resolves around the issue of
how to get it to the front lines in time for the troops to fight back
before they are overwhelmed by the bloodsucking hordes. Keeping in
tone with the period setting of the movie, the railroad is employed
to swiftly transport the weaponry to the battlefield, but through
betrayal Adam gets word of it, which leads to a fight for control of
the train as the film's adrenaline driven action climax, complete
with a huge burning bridge to complicate matters for the good guys.
You got
to hand it to Bekmambetov, the man knows how to direct action scenes,
no matter how silly or bizarre the plot motivations behind them, as
he clearly illustrated in his Hollywood debut Wanted (2008).
Realism is of no consequence; as long as the results look good and
keep the audience engaged, he's game. This strategy of shooting
action is also employed by him for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire
Hunter, to greatest effect in
the climactic train sequence at the end of the film, as well as an
earlier chase on horseback as Abe pursues the fleeing Barts amidst a
wild mustang stampede where gravity itself seems suspended to make
the combination of horse riding and axe swinging in the fight between
man and vampire look both appealing and supernatural. Bekmambetov
also proves he was well aware the movie was produced in 3-D, as he
obviously took the opportunities of this extra dimension into
consideration while filming both action oriented scenes and calmer
moments in the plot. The various axe fights and other assorted
moments of spectacle make good use of 3-D on many occasions, adding
both true depth of vision and the usual attraction of things being
catapulted towards the spectator. Considering this is Bekmambetov's
first 3-D feature, that too is quite an accomplishment in his favor
as an action director. Similarly, he doesn't prove dismayed by the
historical side of the story, making the period parts of the film
come stunningly alive, ranging from fanciful costume work and grand
vistas of famous American landmarks in their Nineteenth Century state
of being. Though Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
focuses on the undead, under Bekmambetov's careful direction the film
always feels very much alive, though many scenes have to be taken
with a grain of salt in order to enable the viewer to fully immerse
him/herself in them.
In
summary, it turns out that in the triumvirate of Grahame-Smith,
Burton and Bekmambetov, the latter Russian element makes all the
difference between making a vampire movie feel stale, as happened to
Dark Shadows, and making it a total blast to watch.
Bekmambetov manages to appropriate a fairly ludicrous story, that
under other, less capable directors could have resulted in fulfilling the cheesy expectations undoubtedly spawned in many
audience members at first by its provocative title, and have it serve
his own style of making a thoroughly enjoyable action flick, thus
allowing the viewer to invest in it as much as its intended campiness
allows. If it wasn't for the fact the success of this film is mostly
due to Bekmambetov's input, one could say Burton and Grahame-Smith
redeemed themselves and are capable of producing a solid vampire film
after all. Though 2012 isn't done with vampires just yet – there's
still that final Twilight movie to look forward to, if you can
stand Twilight that is – it seems a given Abraham
Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is by
far the most appreciable addition to the cinematic vampire legacy in
years (since Daybreakers
really).
And
watch the trailer here:
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