Dracula Untold (2014)

Dracula untold is advertising itself as a, well untold variation of the Dracula story. It tries to portray Dracula as a hero, and give a justification to his transformation into the Vampire itself. It also tries to paint Vlad the Impaler  as a sympathetic leader with high morals whom we should feel bad for. Now my research on either of those two subjects is very limited, or rather non existent. But from what I do know I had a hard time accepting either of those. Doesn't honestly effect the film at all, as it is fiction. But it was a odd choice for a story. Untold has a romance plot, and it is a story about family. The Turks demanded 1000 boys to add into their army years ago. Vlad was one of those and was raised alongside the now Sultan Mehmed. Vlad felt bad about all his actions and the whole Impaler thing, and returned to his people to rule Transylvania as a benevolent leader. Sadly all does not go well, and the Turks are provoked by the Transylvanians, albeit by no real fault of their own. They demand 1000 boys again, as well as Vlad's own son. Vlad does not like this and decides to meet with the Master Vampire played by Charles Dance, and ask for his power. Vlad is given a 3 day trial period. If he does not drink blood he will return to normal....oddly enough he dies in order to initiate the trial. Not sure if that means he would die at the end of the 3 days for good, or some how magically come back to life. Either way he uses vampire magic and abilities to protect his people, and even rallies them behind his new darkness.

The story behind the movie is passable, and honestly it does its job of setting up action. That is the entire draw of this movie, the fighting. You are not seeing a horror, a drama, or anything where you are expecting to be enthralled by a epic tale. You are hear to see Vlad kill some Turks, and look stylish while doing it. And for the most part it delivers in that regard. Vlad strolls into a huge group of enemies and just lays waste to them with his powers. The way they integrated the bat transformation looked great, and seeing him form into swarm and just fly around the battlefield was good fun. The effects were good, not amazing, but still well done. There were a few cheesy moments, but all in all there were very few complaints from that department. There is a scene where Vlad controls a huge hoard of bats and they mimic his movements by crating giant fists out of their bodies. It looked kinda funny and reminded me of that scene in the mummy where the sand was forming the Mummies body as it chased the heroes in the plane.

Sadly where the movie fails the hardest, is as a vampire flick. It is about Dracula, but we don't actually get to see any real vampire activity until the finally. Yes he has powers until then, but he is devoid of the ferocity and the animal instincts you come to expect from these creatures. Until the last few minutes you never see anybody feed. No blood sucking in a vampire movie, what is the point then? Also the final fight was laughable at best. Silver is a vampire weakness according to this, which seems to be about 50-50 with most vampire lore. So the villain tricks Vlad into fighting him in a room of silver. Vlad is then reduced back to the power level of a normal human, and gets progressively weaker as time goes by. I guess it makes sense, but it once again detracted from what I wanted from the movie. Vampire violence. Final fight, Vlad has given in and is now Dracula. I wanted to see him rip the Sultan apart, not struggle with him for a few minutes before somehow just overcoming the silver weakness because of love.

The movie is at its strongest when it is not dealing with vampires. Vlad is likable, and I was able to understand his motivations and even agree with what he was doing. The family aspect and him wanting to save his son over protecting his people was interesting. And then when they turn on him and he tries to restore the balance by protecting them was noble. But I couldn't help but feel it would have worked better if they explored the darker side of the story more, instead of trying to turn Vlad into this amazing great guy. I get that Vampires are "hip" right now, but that doesn't mean we have to make everything about them a love story.

Acting was good across the board. Luke Evans was a good Vlad, and he did alright with the action sequences. Sarah Gadon played his wife Mirena, and she managed that well enough. The character was pretty unlikable by the end, but that wasn't Gadon's fault. Dominic Cooper always plays smug well, and is easy to dislike in pretty much every thing. I think it has to do with his face, but that may just be me. The weakest performance was probably by Game of Thrones actor Art Parkinson who plays Vlad's son. But hey he is young and still learning.

So let's wrap this up. Story is passable, but not great. Action sequences are enjoyable for the most part, but does have some cheesy sections that made me shake my head. Vampires were severely underused, and the film never really felt like it utilized the Dracula property to its fullest. The ending was awful, in many ways I can not explain with out spoiling more then I am willing to. But hey it had a cool line near the end. I am Dracula, son of  the devil. I would have used that as a the tagline for the film. Dracula Untold: Son of the Devil. Or Dracula Untold: The legend is born. Honestly, which one of those sounds like a movie worth seeing?