The 'Not-So-Critical' Critic:
on THE DARK TOWER (2017, 95 minutes, PG-13)
The Quick of It -
Welcome to age-crippled mediocrity. You see, this story is born of the 80’s in
the mind of one, Mr. Stephen King. And,
from his inspirations he drew on during that time, which highly influenced certain
traits and key features of the story, you end up with something defunct.
THE DARK TOWER carries many of the common themes used for
epic narration and was popularly used in the 80’s. A ‘hero’ who has lost faith in himself and
his cause. A ‘villain’ that has insurmountable
power and must inevitably be challenged.
An ‘innocent’ with the key to saving the world. This is a common recipe for stories of that decade. King even sited that his inspirations were
drawn for the TOWER series from what many did during that period: J.R.R. Tolkien for the sense of the journey to
face an uncompromising enemy, Arthurian Legend to place the tools of hope in
the hero’s hands, and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY for the mysterious
protagonist in a world filled with mistrust and the continuous fight for
survival.
The cast is unquestionably the perfect fit. Idris Elba as Roland Deschain, the last
‘gunslinger’ and a man broken after the loss of his father. The Gunslingers were guardians to the Dark
Tower, but their numbers were thinned to one… him. The Dark Tower is said to protect this and
other worlds from the encroaching ‘darkness’.
The Man in Black, played by one of my favorites, THE Matthew
McConaughey, is an inscrutable agent of the ‘darkness’, who’s a master of
sorcery. He wants to destroy the tower and
allow the darkness to consume everything.
He knows that there is a child in the universe that has ‘pure shine’ and
is scouring the various worlds to find him.
The ‘innocent’ is Jake Chambers, played by Tom Taylor (of ‘Legends’,
which is one series I recommend watching).
He has enough spunk on his misunderstood and endearing role to pull it
off and not disrupt the flow, a hard thing to do for most child actors,
especially when they are the central character.
As a side-note, his mother is played by Katheryn Winnick, Lagertha
of ‘Vikings’. She may not have a big
part but she will always be my blinding star.
Director Nikolaj Arcel, better known in the industry for his
writing, the largest title being THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO screenplay,
does a decent job with this project. The
movie is not bad. The dialogue works
even with a premise that exercises your need to suspend reality on a higher
level. The cinematography displays rich
environments and embraces the right amount of uniqueness to keep you interested
in the visual presentation. The acting, to
include the minor characters, is not poorly handled. Overall, the worst thing that may happen is
you get slightly bored for a bit.
So, THE DARK TOWER becomes more of a nostalgic watch and a
chance to see Idris slinging bullets in creative ways. Oh, and Mattey simply telling people to stop
breathing. And they do. Yeah, he is that bad ass. He did kinda sells the film for me, outside
of Idris. Nothing like ‘almost’ rooting
for the bad guy.
Grade: C+
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