Young Abraham Lincoln becomes motherless when the woman falls ill, struck by an unknown virus. Once a teenager, Abraham discovers that the cause of his mother's death was a vampire bite and, having identified the culprit, prepares to fight him, but when he is about to be overwhelmed by the creature, a young noble named Henry Sturgess comes to his rescue. From that moment, Henry trains Abraham as a vampire hunter, who becomes a perfect bloodsucker-killing machine, armed with a silver-bladed axe. Over the years, Abraham runs for the White House and is elected President of the United States, committing to fight against a fierce horde of vampires among the ranks of the Southerners during the Civil War.
A bizarre and undoubtedly original plot is certainly the strong point of "The Legend of the Vampire Hunter," a clumsy and anonymous Italian title for the much more direct and punchy "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter." Behind this curious film, which marks the return behind the camera of Russian Timur Bekmambetov after the success of "Wanted – Scegli il tuo destino," lies a novel that quickly became a cult written by Seth Grahame-Smith, also the author of the screenplay.
Let's put the proverbial dots on the "i" right away: behind the genius of an engaging plot lies a very traditional entertainment film, the classic "baracconata" Hollywoodian that could make many kids shout for joy and, on the contrary, make more than one viewer wrinkle their nose.
Vampires return to being the bad and repulsive ones we loved in innocent times, with a classic look reinforced by frequent facial morphings in computer graphics, which fit surprisingly well into a historical context that could have easily clashed with the fantastic iconography. A dystopian universe in which the United States at the dawn of the Civil War are populated by ruthless vampires who control the slave trade and have a central role in the conflict between Northerners and Southerners. The same Abraham Lincoln, advocate of the Thirteenth Amendment, is credibly framed as a vengeful vampire killer, before, and vampire-killing President after, with an obvious propensity for the first qualification that occupies the most convincing part of the film. Indeed, in the time ellipsis that takes us almost thirty years forward, we perceive the inadequacy of the cinematic adaptation to address a subject constantly balancing between serious and facetious. Bekmambetov's film takes itself damned seriously against all expectations, so seeing a nineteenth-century young man who dismembers vampires with an axe can pass, but seeing the ultra-fifty-something President Lincoln as iconography has described him doing the same things, it tears a few mocking and unwanted smiles.
It must be said that the cross and delight of "The Legend of the Vampire Hunter" are the numerous action scenes that populate the film. Action so exaggerated and unreal (the long chase scene in the middle of a herd of wild horses is the highlight!) that it can become almost annoying in the long run, but at the same time well executed and with extensive use of excellent visual effects to be fascinating. There is an abuse of slow-motion, however, almost to mimic and exponentiate Zack Snyder's style with some frankly gratuitous scenes. It makes you smile, then, the choice to have every character in the story fight with complex martial arts techniques, as if in nineteenth-century America these disciplines were the order of the day.
A lance must be broken in favor of the 3D, an excellent 3D, used to the fullest of its possibilities, never invasive and in a perfect mix between constant use of depth and "effettacci" of relief in the service of the fear factor.
Average cast in which Benjamin Walker undoubtedly stands out in the role of Lincoln, joined by Mary Elizabeth Winstead ("The Thing"), in the role of his wife Mary, Dominic Cooper ("Captain America: The First Avenger"), in the roles of Henry Sturgess and Rufus Sewell ("The Illusionist"), in the role of the evil vampire leader Adam.
"The Legend of the Vampire Hunter" certainly entertains and entertains, but adopts the formula of the classic serious Hollywood blockbuster bloated with special effects that can tire in the long run.
Produced by Tim Burton.
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