In the Unrated version the clothes come off!

Teen Wolf 2 aside there hasn’t been a decent werewolf movie for years, and no classic one since An American Werewolf in London almost 30 years ago.

According to werewolf-movies.com (yes this site really does exist) Ginger Snaps and Dog Soldiers are the only furry films that gained the coveted “4 full moons” in the last decade (I agree), alas Werewolf in a Women’s Prison was not rated. Aside from those two there were over a hundred more mediocre werewolf related films, there were a couple of average yet watchable efforts and basically 90% of outright suckage. The 90s were even worse with nothing to howl about, then it’s all the way back the afore-mentioned as the only “classic”.

So last year when The Wolfman, a big budget film with Benny Del Toro in the furry suit and other real actors, I wondered how it might fare.

In short, add it to the 90% pile. The Wolfman is nothing more than dull.

And I watched the unrated edition hoping for a little more “wolfiness”.

Late Addition June 30 – I get twice as many comments asking “Who is the guy Talbot meets on the train” than I do for any of the 300+ other articles and reviews on this site. So many that I simply stopped posting them. My understanding is that it is Max Von Sydow. If anyone is reading this please tell me why this is such a hot topic out there and why you feel impelled to look this factoid up?

Thanks for reading. (I still think the movie is mediocre.)

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Benicio Del Toro is Laurence Talbot, a well regarded and renowned actor in New York circa 1900. One day he is visited post performance by his brother’s fiancé, she informs him that the brother is missing and has been for a month, feared dead. She believes it would be best if Laurence goes home to London to help with the vigil. Laurence sez no.

Cut to Laurence en route to London via train. We learn that he is obviously a man of great conviction and true to his word. A strange man on the train offers Laurence an ornately designed cane complete with a hidden sword. Laurence graciously sez no. As he alights from the train he finds the man has gone and the cane is still in the carriage, so he takes it.

I told you before the man’s word is binding!!!

Laurence shows up home to meet with his Father played by Anthony Hopkins in a scene that has already been played out in countless other movies, believe it or not I even picked the exact moment where he would say “The prodigal Son returns”, and lo and behold seconds later out it came, it was just that predictable. Laurence and Father share a stilted relationship, indeed early on Hopkins doesn’t seem to give a toss that his famous estranged son has returned home, and the conversations between them are pained and forced.

It turns out that Laurence is too late and that his brother has been found dead and basically with chunks missing. His now widow Gwen (Emily Blunt) wants answers dammit! So Laurence noses around for info, and it is when he visits a local gypsy camp that he is (finally) attacked and the film finds some sort of brief momentum.

Laurence is very nearly dead, a gypsy says that “He can only be released by someone who loves him”. So the rest of the film was just mapped out with one statement then.

Near death one night, ship shape and fighting fit the next morning. Good ole Dad and Gwen stay to see him back to full health, but the locals are sceptical and worried by his almost instant recovery, and the police (Hugo Weaving) show up to investigate the death of his brother and many other locals.

Is Laurence OK? Is something amiss? Anyone asking these questions needs to revisit the poster, but the rest of the film tries to explain everything, including a backstory that needn’t have existed. It becomes a matter of who will get him first? The cops, his Dad, the locals, or will he resolve his situation himself?

In reality by the time the film ended I had long since stopped caring, the crux of the picture was the “relationship a tois” between Laurence, Dad and Gwen, but because there was little spark or chemistry between any of the three the film fell very flat and became disinteresting.

I did jot down the following curios.

–        The beast is large, snarling and very vicious, yet in the aftermath he wakes up again human and for some reason fully clothed?

–        The transformation sequences in An American Werewolf… were far more realistic and effective, and they weren’t just CGI like they are here.

–        The unrated stuff is indeed more violent, but only in as much as they obviously asked “well instead of slashing his chest why not cut his head off?”, then they did just that, only it looks so fake that there is no impact. This was violence for people who never watch violent movies.

The backdrops are lush and exquisite, the sets well designed and lustrous, and the tone uniformly dark, even during the daytime sequences. However a film isn’t only about costuming and set design, and with poor chemistry between the leads, a mediocre plot and not one stand out sequence or scene this is one Wolf begging for a silver bullet.

Sometimes “Gothic and Moody” is just a code to cover up “Boring and Slow”.

Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. At the bottom of my notes page I just wrote “SUX”. Even with my 11 year old boy slang I managed to sum this entire film up.