A moment comes towards the
end of The Dark Tower—Stephen King's
novel series come to life on the big screen—when a thought occurs: "Are they
really ending this already? What the hell?" Indeed, the long-percolating
project from director Nikolaj Arcel (better known as writer for the original
Swedish production of The Girl with the
Dragon Tattoo) crams so very much into so very little time that
practically everything suffers, not least of which is the pacing.
We follow a young boy named
Jake (Tom Taylor) who, in the wake of his father's death, has started having
dream visions of a man in another world who's hell-bent on destroying this mysterious
dark tower that, like, stops demons from breaking into the multiverse
somehow … or something. Of course, everyone from his mom to his therapist to his
shit-heel stepdad (or mom's boyfriend or whatever) doesn't believe that the
visions are real. Jake sure is persistent, though, and when he busts into that
other world through some sci-fi portal machine, it turns out he was right the
whole time and he's got psychic superpowers that amount to some sort of
telepathic communication ability.
An ancient battle was fought
and lost here between the Man in Black (a seemingly bored Matthew McConaughey) and
the Gunslingers, an ancient order of knights. It is eluded to that they
might be related to Arthurian legend somehow … or something. Roland (aka the
Gunslinger; Idris Elba, who makes a sincere go of it) is the last of the order, and having also lost his
father (plus his buddies), he identifies with and joins Jake to stop the
destruction of the tower and kill the Man in Black.
If it sounds cool, that's
because it could have been. But with so much source material and a relatively
short running time, we don't have a chance to care for anyone before the Man in
Black's cartoonish super-villainy gets out of hand. McConaughey plays this in a
too-calm-and-collected sort of way, which could say something about how he's so
evil he doesn't even bother with emotions, but mostly it feels lacking in
drama.
Oh, there are neat little
visual tricks that show how the Gunslinger is super-good at reloading his guns
in various ways, but the threats never seem particularly perilous and the Man
in Black's motives boil down to "he's just evil" … or something.
The Dark Tower could
have easily been two-plus hours and far more awesome; hell, it could have
been two or three movies. In fact, it should have been, but if we had to guess,
it'll probably do pretty poorly and wind up on the cinematic ash heap forgotten
to time ... or something.
3
+ Super-cool idea
- Super-uncool execution
The Dark Tower
Directed by Arcel
With Taylor, Elba, McConaughey
Violet Crown, Regal, PG-13, 95 min.
Santa Fe Reporter