Hair today, gone tomorrow
The Wolfman / Ruled by the dictates of a pluperfect moon, poor Lawrence Talbot–played by Lon Chaney Jr, in 1941, Benicio del Toro in this year’s The Wolfman–transforms into a slavering werewolf, ravages and kills savagely, then wakes up human again. There is no greater monster-as-victim figure in American B-movie horror lore.
This new version, shelved by the studio for two years, suffers from overkill: huge budget, added characters, hammy acting, overly-long stories and a miscast del Toro. It goes on way too long, shifts emphasis among three characters, and strands del Toro on the sidelines.
The 1941 original, written by the great Curt Siodmak, was short, unpretentious and well cast, with Chaney Jr. genuinely first-rate as the tortured Talbot–cursed in the full of the moon and guilt-ridden by day. Even the great Maria Ouspenskaya had a role, as a prophetic gypsy, and she was terrific. This new one, for all its effective special effects, is an elegant, pretentious dud, too much of that which is not enough.
Instead of being tortured, creating audience sympathy, del Toro, costumed like an Elizabethan Hamlet (dark clothing, Laurence Olivier bangs), broods and broods like Hamlet at Elsinore. Doesn’t he know he’s playing a wolf, not a Great Dane?
Anthony Hopkins, always ready to nibble the scenery unless he has a strong director, here chews it wholesale, more viciously than the Wolfman chomps on his victims. Hopkins is del Toro’s papa, and also a werewolf. He seems to like it, however, and Hopkins revels in his tin-ear dialogue, replete with facial tics, smacking lips, hammy tone and fussy, scene-stealing bits of stage business.
Acquitting themselves respectably are Emily Blunt (Young Victoria) as the love-interest, and Hugo Weaving (The Matrix triad) as a Scotland Yard detective. Both are models of acting restraint in the midst of the del Toro-Hopkins jousting, and seem to be in quite another movie.
When was this hirsute epic filmed? Well, it even has a water-boarding sequence, a jibe at Bush-Cheney shenanigans in another era. In a departure from the original, it has the wolfman terrorize London, bounding about on rooftops not unlike Catwoman. Meanwhile back at the ranch, Papa fumes until sonny returns and they can have their showdown, in which two stuntmen brawl, causing a fire which destroys the gargantuan estate. However, on the day this scribe saw this movie, about a third of the audience had then departed, the movie just too slow for them who tweet and text.
It’s not a silver bullet that did this Wolfman in–it was the digital media age, which make waiting for the phases of the moon to manifest just a bit too old-fashioned for the film’s target audiences.
This new version is a noble bore, a prolix drag. Something, dear reader, is rotten in Denmark.
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