Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

         

Naturally when you hear about a movie about Abraham Lincoln, you automatically see stove-top hat, beard, and sometimes an axe.  You just usually don’t see that axe plunging into the neck of a vampire.  But you get that here hence the title, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  The film is an adaption of the novel of the same name that splices the historic events in Lincoln’s life with an added twist of vampires roaming and eventually planning to rule the country.  So who else can stop them, but our kung fu, silver axe wielding 16^th President of the United States.

Starting with Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) as a young boy who sees a loved one murdered by a creature of the night, who indecently have really good sunscreen, since they walk about in the day armed only with stylish sunglasses.  He vows to exact vengeance against the fiend, only to be stopped and eventually trained by Henry (Dominic Cooper) the mysterious man with a secret who knows all about the existence of vampires among us.  The first half of the film plays like the origin story of a superhero, you get the family tragedy, brooding, the training montage, the love interest, the buildup to his first big challenge, or in the videogame terms, “big boss battle”.  This first half didn’t work too much for me, even though it was all pretty basic set up.  The second half of the film has him already President and is trying to fight the monsters with politics, and finds that there may be no other way than to get his hands dirty to help save the country from evil Rufus Sewell (Dark City) and his gang of bloodsuckers.  Watching Walker as Lincoln try to win the civil war, free the slaves, and deal with another personal tragedy all with vampires in the background really worked for me. Even though it probably shouldn’t have, all the way up to and including the over the top heavy CGI’ed action packed ending.  There was enough overall to be an entertaining film despite the problems.

Director Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch, Wanted) does bring his unique vision and hyper action to the screen as always, and it’s a decent fit with a premise that on the surface seems absurd.  However writer Seth Grahame-Smith who wrote the script for last month’s “Dark Shadows” and here adapts his own novel to the screen needs to work on his screenwriting, much like the young Lincoln in the film, he has a lot to learn.

--Robert L. Castillo