Still a better love story than Twilight... Bram's Stoker's Dracula, to those that know the novel, really needs no introduction. In the 19th century, a young and ambitious real estate attorney named Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) has been sent to Transylvania to arrange the real estate acquisitions of Count Dracula (Gary Oldman). It's not long after arriving at the count's castle that Harker begins to notice many strange occurrences. Meanwhile, back in London, Harker's fiancee Mina Murray (Winona Ryder) and her friend Lucy Westenra (Sadie Frost) have been encountering some strange and haunting appearances by a mysterious figure. At first, everyone chalks it up to just "bad dreams", but Lucy soon develops a rare blood disease that her friend and physician Dr. Jack Seward (Richard E. Grant) can't seem to diagnose. Unable to pinpoint what's ailing her, Dr. Seward brings in his former mentor Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) to figure out what is wrong. Van Helsing's diagnoses goes beyond the medical field when he sums up that Lucy has been transformed into a vampire by Dracula. From there, a manhunt for the dreaded lady killer donning a killer beehive doo like no other begins.
As I mentioned up above, Bram Stoker's Dracula is one of my favorite novels and despite the fact that vampire myth predates Dracula by centuries, people tend to associate anything vampire with the iconic character perfected by Stoker. So, let me address the big elephant in the room here. Yes, Keanu Reeves (Whooooaa... it's like Dracula!!) is beyond miscast here and his performance is about as uneven as they come. I mean, if not even Francis Ford Coppola can coax just a teensy bit of magic out of you, then - well, yeah. You can forgive one bad performance out of the entire cast though (see my review of Elysium), especially when this is one of the most visually gorgeous takes on the legendary monster. Aside from the usual liberties with the story you tend to see in film adaptations, this is one of the more faithful takes on Stoker's novel that I've seen bringing characters from the book such as Sir Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris, normally omitted entirely, to life (which is a shame 'cause Morris is one of my favorite characters from the story). Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins are equally fantastic as Dracula and Van Helsing repectively, two roles that give them the liberty to chew the scenery. Oldman's performance is more tortured in his approach to Dracula than what we've seen before. There certainly was hardly anything sympathetic about Dracula in the novel, but boy, does Oldman sell it for me anyway. Tom Waits also gets his scene stealing moments as well as the insane R. M. Renfield, a former colleague of Harker's gone mad. Ryder is solid as Mina and Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Bill Campbell and Sadie Frost also provide some dependable supporting work as "God's madmen" and the ill-fated Lucy respectively. With some Oscar winning makeup and costume design, beautiful art direction, a terribly underrated musical score by Wojciech Kilar and Monica Bellucci as one of Dracula's brides (right there, BAM!! I'm sold), this obviously isn't as iconic as the 1931 horror classic starring Bela Lugosi (which actually is nothing like the novel, but there were legal reasons for that), but it's still one of my personal favorites for horror and an overall strong adaptation of one the greatest works in literature.
No comments:
Post a Comment