Van Helsing - 05/09/04

Written by: Stephen Sommers

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Roxburgh, David Wenham

Official Site

I've enjoyed Sommers movies in the past. Especially Deep Rising, I thought that was a very clever creature film.

The Mummy films... I liked the second one better. I thought they were entertaining, which is what he was shooting for. Sommers makes films meant to entertain. He's written pretty much everything he's directed, which is impressive to say the least. All of his films (especially the Mummy movies) have made money. I think Van Helsing will be his first film to come up short at the box office.

First off, the film has gotten an enormous amount of bad reviews. Now, I don't know if these are from overly critical people who were upset that the big Three of Universal's creatures were being re-vamped, recreated into one film... maybe some people saw that as sacralidge. Ok... or maybe people weren't digging on the film because they wanted 'art' that day, instead of a wild effects fest. Or maybe... well, hell, I could say that all day. Who knows what they were expecting.

Some people genuinely didn't like the film. To this I say "You must not be a fan of mindless entertainment." This film isn't trying to hide under any other guise. It's certainly not trying to herald itself as the next big thing... it's a movie using classic characters that people love. That's it.

I have to say this for Sommers, he has one hell of an imagination. I have been very impressed with his work as both writer/director. There were some incredibly inventive scenes in Van Helsing, along with the re-imagining of all three of the classic Universal Characters, Dracula, The Wolfman and Frankenstein.

His biggest problem (since, and including, The Mummy) is dialog. Huge problem. Some of the dialog in this film is so cliched, so recycled and syrupy that I wanted to plug my ears and just watch the film.

The second problem in this film is Kate Beckinsale. I did not like her work in Underworld, and I thought she was just awful in this film. She has zero personality, which comes across the screen as flat acting with almost zero presence. I say 'almost' zero presence because she is a very attractive woman, easy to look at... but whenever she opens her mouth, shudder... it's too bad, to. She was cast as a pretty face, that's about it.

Hugh Jackman... not terrible. Definitely plays a great hero. He's a good actor. I've enjoyed him in the X-Men films, thought he did a very good job in Swordfish... the only thing holding him back in this film was dialog. That was it... he's certainly no stranger to action, and he took the character as far as he could have gone... though I'm not sure why he sounded like an American in old Europe and Romania... but, eh... not as bad as Kevin Costner fubbing a British accent, eh?

Sorry Kevin, had to bring that up as a comparison, nothing personal.

Ok... so, Jackman. He's only been around for about six, seven years, scored huge with the X-Men role. He's also done some brilliant Broadway work... you can see the draw here, especially for the type of crowd that they were trying to draw in... being a huge comic book fan myself, digging the X-Men movie and its main star, sure I would go and see this, the critics be damned.

Their (the executives) plan worked ok. The movie made over $50 million this past weekend, but with a suspected budget of over $150 million... well, the money made worldwide won't make this a flop (along with DVD sales)... but the draw wasn't what they expected... and with Troy opening up next weekend (a film I have no desire to see), well, it's supposed to make short work of Van Helsing. We shall see.

I thought Richard Roxburgh, who plays Dracula, was fantastic. Very funny, very charismatic. I was impressed. He's been in some mainstream work in the last few years, though not very impressive movies... and I must say that this is the best of the lot (besides Rouge!). Mission: Impossible II, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen... I can't say much about his performances in those films, because I'm trying to forget having seen both of them. I never did see Moulin Rouge!, forgive me.

I should say something about the very small similarity to this film and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen... though I'd have to say that Sommers took his inspiration from Alan Moore's great writing, and not the trainwreck that was the movie. There is a great opening scene in this film, dealing with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde... and I cannot say for sure if Sommers was, again, inspired by Gentlemen or not... but it would seem so. Pretty cool to see Robbie Coltrane playing Mr. Hyde.

David Wenham. Probably most famous for his role in the Lord of the Rings as Faramir, he's done some other work, but I'm sure he would be hard to recognize... Dark City, Moulin Rouge!, The Crocodile Hunter... I don't remember him in those films... especially Rouge, since I didn't see it. His acting was fine in this film, though I think he did a little bit of over acting at some points... the biggest problem was how this character was written. Sure, using suspension of disbelief... I mean, hell, you HAVE to with this type of film... ok, I can buy his character.

The problem is, we've seen his character so many goddamn times (it's ok, I can say that, I'm just a friar), that the character becomes boring. Sommers brought nothing new to this character. Sure, a few new gadgets, but that doesn't help. This cliched type of character needs to be un-cliched... someone needs to bring something new to this Q type character, and quick.

Supporting cast... I was very happy to see Sommers bring back Kevin J. O'Connor into his film. O'Connor had been in both Deep Rising and The Mummy, and did really good jobs. He's got a wonderful sense of humor, and he brought it to his role as Igor in this film. Will Kemp, who will be starring in Mindhunters (whenever it gets released) also did a great job as Velkan. I found that his character was well written, better than Beckinsale's character, which is kind of strange for a supporting character...

And, of course, there were the three brides of Dracula. Silvia Colloca, Elena Anaya and Josie Maran. Sans makeup, they were three beautiful women who got picked off one by one... and who did pretty good jobs as the brides. Shooting for a larger audience than, say, Coppola's Dracula, you can understand why there weren't more sexier scenes with these three... too bad. But, that's what you get with PG-13 films.

Cinematographer Allen Daviau is no stranger to the screen. He's worked with Spielberg on a number of projects, though none of his huge budget work of late. Nope, he shot films like E.T., Temple of Doom (second unit), The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun. He shot sequences in the Twilight Zone movie, The Falcon and the Snowman, Harry and the Hendersons, Avalon, Defending Your life, Bugsy, Fearless, Congo and The Astronaut's Wife...

And, out of nowhere, he's asked to shoot a $150 million dollar feature. How the hell does that happen?!?

I'm certainly not putting him down... he did some excellent work in this film. I'm just curious how he got the job. There is more CGI in this film than all of the other films he's shot combined... and it takes a certain kind of DP, one who has a whole lot of experience shooting with massive CGI in almost every scene, to pull a job off like this.

So, I found it strange, to say the least, when I saw his previous work. But Daviau did a great job. The opening scene, shot in black and white, was very well lit... I was impressed with that. There are times when the film is muddy with too much CGI, not his fault... and there are other times when the photography flows so well with the scene as it's unfolding that, well... it works wonders. Add a great score by Alan Silvestri and you get a movie, in total, that looks great and entertains.

My final comment will be on Sommers and crew's re-imagining of the monsters. I was very impressed with the work done on all three, but most particularly that of Frankenstein's Monster (Shuler Hensley). That was very well done, indeed. I thought that the way the Wolfman turned was very clever as well... and the final transformation of Dracula into the bat-like creature was very cool.

All in all, this isn't a terrible movie. It's a popcorn movie with some (only some) bad dialog and a bad casting choice in Beckinsale... other than that, just enjoy it for what it is.