The Wolfman, directed by Joe Johnstone in 2010 and starring Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving.
Actually this isn't too bad. It tries quite hard to re-create some of the atmosphere and tone of Universal studio and Hammer horrors and gets quite a bit right. Joe Johnstone made one of my favourite comic book movies, The Rocketeer, and he clearly loves the source material. Del Toro isn't too bad as Lawrence Talbot, he probably got the part because he looked and sounded like a wolfman in The Usual Suspects. Anthony Hopkins, on the other hand decides to chew the scenary (amongst other things) and to do an accent. What is is about actors doing regional English accents? They all sound rubbish. Do English actors doing American accents offend the ears of American audiences as well?
The only real problem with this film is that it relies so much on the source material that we know what is going to happen right from the start. We know the bite is coming, we know he will transform, and we can predict an ending involving the Wolfman, Emily Blunt and a silver bullet. The only thing that they can do different to the original is to increase the gore quotient, so we get lots of blood and body parts thrown at the screen. There is one rather fine sequence when the Wolfman rampages through Victorian London and overturns a bus with resulting chaos and mayhem. I suspect this is a knowing nod to a similar scene at the end of American Werewolf in London.
Anyway let me give this a true Joe Bob Briggs review: Three beasts, no breasts, heads roll, arms roll, legs roll. 3 out of 5 stars. Check it out!
But Death Train is still in the lead.
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