Since The Phantom
revisit went so well I thought The Shadow
could be another tiny treasure. Well, it
ain’t. The script is perhaps the main
culprit (David Koepp (Jurassic Park,
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)) with a weak villain,
muddled evil scheme, lack of action, intrigue and horrendous dialogue. Of course, it doesn’t help that the acting is
bland (except for maybe Tim Curry (Muppet
Treasure Island) who plays a henchman) and the directing isn’t anything special
(which is surprising because I dig some of Russell Mulcahy’s other work like Ricochet and The Real McCoy).
I like the production design though. The very exaggerated Art Deco style is nice
visually but isn’t worth checking out the movie for alone.
The thing is it feels like there isn’t enough of The Shadow himself
here. There’s plenty of his alter ego,
Lamont Cranston, where Alec Baldwin really shines in a helluva bad performance. Sure, I already mentioned the script is crap
but Baldwin and every other actor compound the problem by hamming it up in the
worst possible way. And now that I think
about it The Shadow is actually in this a fair amount. It’s that most of this movie is so
forgettable that it feels like the title character is too absent.
Like The Phantom The Shadow is sort of a messy character
with abilities that he doesn’t use to their full potential, guns that he only
fires as a last resort and he has a whole army of civilian agents at his
disposal even though, just like any other super hero, he conceals his identity
from the world. That’s a little contrary
if you ask me. He has a cool name, look
and super powers but at the same time he doesn’t stand out. Maybe it’s that one of his trademarks is he
laughs manically (even though he’s the hero), or maybe it’s that he relies on
too many other people to help fight crime (it seems like every other person in
NYC is a Shadow agent), or maybe it’s that he doesn’t have a neat base of
operations like so many other comic book characters (they don’t show it here at
least), or maybe ok I’ll stop. You get
the point. It’s a combination of a bunch
of shit that doesn’t add up for me.
My favorite part of the picture is when Lamont rips off his
own face like it’s a rubber mask. He sticks
his fingers underneath his skin, starts pulling and it looks really great. This is probably the strangest and edgiest part
of the movie.
Bottom line is aside from that one face tear scene, there
isn’t anything all that interesting here.
I think The Shadow card might’ve been played too early. He seems like he would be a better fit with
the darker and more serious tone that we have today in comic book films. It’s actually kind of interesting that this
version is very effects heavy so the impression is even stronger that they
should reboot this guy.
Unless you’re a big comic book movie person or Tim Curry fan
I’d say skip it.
No comments:
Post a Comment