I'll say this for I, Frankenstein: It delivers what it
promises. This is DEFINITELY a movie
about Frankenstein's monster (now known as Adam) battling demons alongside
tepid gargoyle allies. It even does that
job reasonably well, with fluid fight choreography, artsy camera work, and a motif
brimming with gothic...everything, basically.
It also makes the commendably bold choice of basing its anti-hero and
plot specifically on Mary Shelly's original novel, rather than the more
recognized and therefor marketable Universal Studios incarnation. Unfortunately, by simple virtue (or is it
sin?) of being a movie, it also makes IMPLIED promises of such things as plot,
dialogue, characterization, and most-notably, PACING; that iconic bell-curve of
story progression we learned in elementary school. (Setup, Conflict, Climax,
Conclusion; if I remember correctly.)
Such subtleties are scarce here, and you miss them
immediately. Before the opening
narration is even all the way done, Adam is attacked by demons and rescued by
gargoyles [NOTE: They're also angels, basically; I forgot to mention that in the original review]; both out of the blue. They
offer him (not to mention us) the brief pleasure of a supporting cast, and then
he leaves, narrates some more, fights some more demons, flashes forward,
narrates some more, fights some more demons, revisits the angels, who do some
demon fighting on their own, and once in a while there's a conversation, to
remind you this isn't a video game...is the snark I would've made two decades
ago (and other reviewers have already expressed such an opinion), but these
days there are plenty of video games that have more dialogue than this film and
are less linear to boot.
Once again, the problem isn’t even that anything that’s
actually in this movie is necessarily bad.
It looks nice (read; it’s ugly as sin, but that’s appropriate in this
case, and it’s detailed), almost all performances are competent (if none even
remotely impressive), and as mentioned, the action scenes work fine of
themselves. The problem is that a lot of
good things aren’t actually in this movie.
Without the elements that anchor the trailer-filling fight scenes
together, it’s a disorganized mess that makes you wonder why you aren’t
watching another action/horror movie; you never get a good feel for exactly
what part the barely-existent story you’re seeing. In fact, it’s arguable that the climax of
this film feels less climatic than other scenes. (I won’t spoil it, but there
wouldn’t be much love lost if I did.)
All of the above content would be sufficiently damning on
its own, but I have a few more nitpicks to impart. The first is that, due to the film’s constant
kinetic pace, any ability to take seriously its backstory of a secret
Heaven-Hell war raging under our noses for centuries, quickly flies out the
window with a rain of shattered stain glass.
Somehow, despite both being able to transform into human form, neither
the demons nor the gargoyles care a whiff for subtlety when they get down to
their jobs, smashing things and vaulting through the sky in full-view
throughout a European city (the film never specifies which one) that is somehow
still intact and populous in spite. All
that might be a bit more forgivable had the film been even remotely self-aware
and whimsical, but its humor is limited to a few dry situational snarks.
Which brings us to the second additional nitpick:
Tragically, despite its unique concept, and despite applying a technically
appropriate style to that concept, an action film has never felt so
cliché. The ugly characters, dark
alleys, and halls are perfect for a franchise gothic from the start, and the
Latin choir score and existential ramblings gel perfectly with the biblical
theme. Had it come out in some other
time (and, it should go without saying, evaded at least some of the flaws I
stated above), I, Frankenstein could have worn such distinctions well. In the present era, though, thanks to the
success of such films as The Matrix and Batman Begins, we’ve spent a decade
full of action films abusing such morose tropes. Onward through the 2010s, just when you think
Marvel’s films have won their final heroic battle against that conformity,
another black sheep comes along to add to the sludge of a long mostly-black
flock.
All that being said, I can say one thing emphatically
positive about this movie: It’s a blast to make fun of; like no other B movie
in recent memory. I’ve had some great
laughs today, all the way from hearing my friends weigh in their thoughts,
through reading critics’ reviews of this movie, to writing my own. Describe it at any length, and jokes write
themselves that I didn’t even know I had before I started it. This dubious honor may well grant the film a
twisted sort of immortality—much like a lightning bolt frying a corpse.
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