The Wolfman (**)

Directed by: Joe Johnston

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving

Seen: February 24^th 2010

** Out of ****

The Wolfman was my first encounter with this particular story, and based on this one I’m not going to sprain an ankle in an effort to get my hands on the 1941 original. The movie starts of in the woods, Ben Talbot being hunted by the creature. He is severely injured and attempts to flee, and is not heard from again. Ben’s fiancée Gwen Conliffe (Blunt) calls on Lawrence Talbot (Del Toro) for assistance in finding his brother, and despite his feelings for his family, he does heed the call. Lawrence is a travelling Shakespearian actor in town only for a theatre engagement, but he vows to find out what happened to his brother before leaving.

Lawrence investigates the case in parallel with Detective Francis Aberline (Weaving), who happens to also be a fan of his acting. In his searches Lawrence is directed to a Gypsy camp, where he is attacked by the werewolf, and almost fatally wounded. His wounds start recovering at a rate unbelievable to his physician, and soon he realises that he is a changed man. Yes, Lawrence is turning into a werewolf himself, and after his first transformation he is arrested and incarcerated in an asylum, where he is treated for suffering from delusions – this time the one that he believes he is a werewolf. Things go awry, and the hunt is on.

The Wolfman is atmospheric enough to fit snugly into the genre, but it does not seem to be fully sure of what it wants to be. There are three or four very violent scenes in which people are practically ripped apart, but then again a sense of insinuated off-screen violence for the rest of the film. The set design is pretty impressive when indoors, but when outdoors on a foggy night it feels too much like filming in a studio hangar, and thus not really authentic. The human-werewolf transformations employ some of the better special effects I’ve seen for this kind of thing (far better than the Underworld movies’ depiction of this, for instance), but there were still short instances when it looked more like special effects than a human turning into a wolf. And, to mention one other thing, the close-up of the Wolfman’s face when he’s running felt slightly; stupid, for lack of a better word.

Benicio Del Toro is very good as the title character, and even though it is refreshing to not see this kind of character excessively moping around because he is becoming a monster, at least a little bit more of it than what we get might have aided the story. Anthony Hopkins is his usual broody old man full of wisdom, but not really much more, he just showed up for this one. Emily Blunt plays the poor woman whose husband is murdered by the Werewolf while his brother, whom she gets quite close to, becomes the werewolf with the necessary gravitas, and it’s worth a mention that she looks particularly beautiful with her hair let down. Hugo Weaving gets the opportunity to channel Agent Smith from The Matrix – and he channels a lot of Smith here – I was reminded of the scene in The Matrix where Smith interrogates Morpheus to such a degree that it surprised me for a moment to see Weaving without his black suit.

All in all The Wolfman is not a great movie, and it only has moments of excitement during its seemingly overlong running time. This is just a rather good looking period piece dressed up as a dark and murky Werewolf horror movie…