When it comes to vampire flicks, I prefer the down ’n’ dirty kind. Screw the refined elegance of Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Interview With the Vampire; give me the gritty backwoods bloodsucking of Near Dark any day. I want to hear undead biker Bill Paxton bellow, “I hate it when they ain’t been shaved!” before [...]
In The Spy Next Door, Jackie Chan plays a Chinese intelligence wiz “on loan” to the CIA and about to retire when he gets caught up with his girlfriend’s kids. This allows the aging action star to keep one leg in martial arts and the other in light domestic comedy. Unfortunately, that position is more [...]
As simple as a classic country song and as satisfying as the best of them, Crazy Heart hits all the variations of the three-chord truth and leaves you humming quietly at the end. This subtly crafted film centres on a broken-down singer, and Jeff Bridges’s unforgettable performance as alcoholic has-been Bad Blake is something to [...]
In adapting such a complex, cherished book as The Lovely Bones, it’s not surprising that Peter Jackson would get one thing wrong. But it’s a big thing. Alice Sebold’s 2002 novel is told from the perspective of a 14-year-old girl who has been murdered and is watching from heaven as her family self-destructs, then rebuilds [...]
Twin filmmakers Allen and Albert Hughes decided to return to the big screen after a nine-year hiatus (their last film together was From Hell ) with a postapocalyptic fable about a lethal warrior with a precious book. Eli (Denzel Washington) has what might well be the last King James Bible in the world. It’s 2043 [...]
When it comes to vampire flicks, I prefer the down ’n’ dirty kind. Screw the refined elegance of Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Interview With the Vampire; give me the gritty backwoods bloodsucking of Near Dark any day. I want to hear undead biker Bill Paxton bellow, “I hate it when they ain’t been shaved!” before gorging himself on a redneck’s neck.
Daybreakers is the visual opposite of Near Dark. Its upscale vampires wear tailored suits, drive luxury cars, and savour blood from wine glasses. It’s 2019, and they exist in a polished, gleaming world where amber-eyed vamps rule and humans have been hunted almost to extinction.
“Life’s a bitch, and then you don’t die,” quips hematologist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke). If he doesn’t discover a substitute for human blood soon then he and his neck-biting brethren are toast. His experiments are carried out under the eye of his greedy boss, Charles Bromley (Sam Neill), who runs a corporation that farms humans for their precious and fast-diminishing fluid. In the glossy, blue-tinted future created by sibling Aussie writer-directors Michael and Peter Spierig, blood is the new oil, and the ramifications of “peak blood” aren’t pretty.
After an impressive first half that scores points with such timely socioeconomic speculation—plus the most entertaining exploding-body scene ever—things start to sour when the monumentally miscast Willem Dafoe shows up as a ’50s-style hipster in full-on Happy Days garb. He’s the Elvis-quoting leader of an underground militia and the only person who’s ever changed from vampire back to human, so naturally Dalton takes that as a cue to try and save the world. Around here Daybreakers’ clever streak runs out and the previously witty, refreshing film becomes a predictable action romp that’s big on over-the-top gore but lacking in everything else.
del.icio.us
blinklist
digg
Facebook
Furl
ma.gnolia
Newsvine
Pownce
reddit
StumbleUpon
Technorati
Twitter