Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
In an effort to start doing some more “current” material – because some people don’t like it when I do old stuff; which I’ll still do, so screw you – I’ll review a movie that I just saw over the weekend. Will it be any good or will it be a stupid parody movie that I thought it would be?
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
This is about who you think it is: President Abraham Lincoln. We see the guy as a kid, fighting to protect his childhood best friend from slavers. Because he did this, the slavers decide to pull their support from Lincoln’s father and seek to punish him. And so, the guy kills Abraham’s mother. As an adult, Lincoln seeks vengeance on them, hunting down the man who personally killed his mother. However, the whole plan backfires when the man turns out to be a vampire who cannot be killed by a simple flintlock. With the vampire at his throat and certain death is imminent, Abraham is saved by a stranger named Henry, who takes him in and teaches Abraham how to fight and kill vampires, who have taken up residence in the South and are the main slave operators in the United States. Lincoln goes on a road to save the slaves and defeat the vampires once and for all – with powerful timeless words… and a silver dipped ax. Mostly the ax.
I actually rather liked the story. While it sounded incredibly stupid and flat out fan fiction-like, it was actually well done, with historical references and figures scattered throughout the movie that I had fun finding. It was actually probably the most original movie I have seen all year. It was an exciting and engaging story that still managed to be oddly original in a sea of remakes, reboots, and just plain stupid movies. Well done.
I think this was my biggest problem: the camera work. While the fight scenes were a lot of fun and exciting, the cameras are just annoying. Slow-motion only works SOMETIMES, but when combined with a camera that continually shifts position, it just makes my dizzy and the fights hard to follow. Part of me thinks that Zack Snyder would have done better – I’m not his biggest fan, but he has a knack for combining slow motion and a steady camera. But then the other part of me realizes that Snyder probably would have screwed up the rest and the movie just would have lacked that original flavor.
On that note, the choreography was rather nice. The ax-play was well done and a lot of fun to watch (the rare times I could see it in its entirety without the scene being cut back and forth… sorry). It was awesome.
The acting was surprisingly good. This was Benjamin Walker’s (Lincoln) first starring role and his biggest role. The guy did a good job, from the action to the drama. He did well and kinda looked the part when he got the beard. I also liked Dominic Cooper’s (Henry) role. I’m starting to like the guy, and this is by far my favorite performance of his (sorry, Howard Stark).
Overall, this was an extremely surprising movie. I walked in with extremely low expectations and I was blown away. Masterpiece? No, not really. Nor is it really ground breaking. But it felt very fresh and rather original to me. Have we’ve seen it before? Yeah we’ve seen parts of it before, but I liked the way the movie was presented, I liked the story, the action was good (though needed better camera work), and the acting was shockingly good. Yes, I liked this movie. I really liked it.
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