Showing some love to this unfairly judged monster movie.
Sicario: Day of the Soldado opened this weekend and while it was squashed by dinosaurs and animated superheroes, the film has been more or less embraced by the same fans who made the original film a hit three years ago. Emily Blunt is absent from the installment, but Benecio Del Toro is back as Alejandro headlining the sequel alongside the also-returning Josh Brolin.
His presence in Sicario: Day of the Soldado represents something of a return to leading man form for Del Toro, who most recently has been enjoying clocking time through supporting roles in big-budget features. Yet Sicario should remind audiences what an unmatched acting force the Oscar-winner is when he’s tasked with carrying a film. Although some may not agree, a prime example of this is the actor’s work in 2010’s The Wolfman.
A remake of the Universal 1942 classic, this remake of The Wolfman stars Del Toro as Lawrence Talbot, a celebrated London actor who is called home by his brother’s fiance Gwen (Blunt) to investigate the disappearance of his brother. The homecoming also includes a painful reunion with Lawrence’s father Sir John (Anthony Hopkins) and the strong resentment shared between the two. When Lawrence’s brother turns up dead and other villagers meet a similar grisly fate at the hands of a large wolf-like creature who appears when the full moon is out, Lawrence begins to suspect that something is changing within him.
Don’t believe what you’ve heard, The Wolfman DOES deliver as a monster movie in the ways it needs to. The movie cannot help but feel like pure genre material through practical methods including Danny Elfman’s wonderfully gothic score and cinematographer Shelly Johnson’s ethereal gauze which is both dreamlike and sinister all at once. The Wolfman is surrounded by one gorgeously elaborate set after another, all of which feel like a world which spells doom for anyone belonging to it. This is never more true than in the delirious montage featuring Lawrence after he is captured and committed. Spurred on by the effects of electroshock therapy, Lawrence goes on a horror-filled hallucinatory journey full of apparitions and violent flashes. It’s the stuff nightmares are made of and the by far the film’s most dizzying and energetic sequence. When it comes to the violence, the blood is red and the action, while carefully doled out, is pulsating. Director Joe Johnston has no bones about showing blood and guts, but makes sure they are used in the most effective and cinematic of ways, making the experience more thrilling than throwaway. Adding to all of this are Rick Baker’s legendary make-up effects, which have never been more exciting and beautiful to look at than they are here, particularly in the film’s third act.
On the flip side of The Wolfman also works as a thoughtful character piece about a troubled family history and the effects it has on the soul. We learn that Lawrence has spent his life on the stage as a means of hiding away from the tragedies of his past, specifically the death of his mother at the hands of a werewolf. When he discovers that the creature which took his mother’s life is still lurking, he finds himself driven by an unstoppable redemptive force to somehow avenge his mother’s death. It’s the same sense of redemption which causes Gwen to enter into the darkness as well, hoping it will serve as a testament to the man she lost. But it’s ultimately the showdown between Lawrence and Sir John; father and son battling each other the way most do in an effort to reconcile themselves and the men they have become, where The Wolfman truly hits its emotional mark. For both men, the fight eventually becomes less a battle with their own flesh and blood, but rather the monster inside them both which is at the heart of their fight.
Del Toro brings the right kind of gloom and pathos to the role of Lawrence. The way he balances his character’s struggle to fight against the beast inside him is right up the actor’s alley, as the film offers him his most flamboyant role to date. Many feel that Hopkins is by now playing an exaggerated version of Anthony Hopkins. That may well be the case here , but the actor has rarely been given a role as fun as Sir John with which to command the screen with, which he does. Blunt may feel a bit disposable, yet she brings out Gwen’s empathy, dignity and a need, for whatever reason, to venture back into the darkness. At least her role has more weight than that of Hugo Weaving’s as the inspector charged with hunting down the beast, who spends half his screen time offering one suspicious look after another.
While it faced little competition upon its February 2010 release, The Wolfman was a colossal bomb, not even being able to recoup its balloon-sized budget. If audiences were uninterested, the critics were savage to no end and bestowed one bad review after another upon the film. Redemption for the film did come in the form of an Oscar win for Baker and his dazzling make-up work on the film however , bringing him back full circle to when he took home the same award years earlier for An American Werewolf in London.
It’s no secret that The Wolfman had plenty of problems in getting to the screen including a revolving door of directors, script issues, an escalating budget and a number of postponed release dates. Some of the problems sadly made their way to the finished product. For all it does right, The Wolfman doesn’t always find the balance between its brooding melancholy and over-the-top grandness. Adding to the awkwardness is the romance between Lawrence and Gwen which feels peripheral at best. Yet The Wolfman makes no apologies for such issues, nor for taking its time and enjoying its surrounding trappings, all of which are worth . Ultimately though, it’s hard to truly dismiss a film made by people who have such an affinity for the era of the monster movie and everything which made it so great.
