strange little movie
May. 4th, 2011 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
veronica_richWe went to see "Dylan Dog: Dead of Night" last night during Economy Night at a local theater. This seems to be an independent film made a couple of years ago and just now released for some reason (my guess is it couldn't find a distributor? I don't know). Since we only live a few miles from this theater and the price isn't bad on Tuesday nights, we've been trying to go each week to see something new, which is a new experience for me as I'm not a big moviegoer.
"Dylan Dog" is based on a graphic novel about paranormal investigator Dylan Dog (duh), played by Brandon "I Was Superman For a Movie" Routh. He's the collectively elected/appointed investigator agreed upon by all the undead in New Orleans - werewolves, vampires, zombies - to solve cases when one of them steps over a line and causes trouble among each other or for the living; except, Dylan retired after some difficulty following the murder of his girlfriend and a snafu with the vampires. Now he and his young lackey, Marcus, survive with cheating-spouse detective work. Dylan is called out of retirement by the strange murder of a local importer over demon artifacts.
This is an odd little movie. It's definitely not A-list; more like C. There's overacting, some fuzzy camera shots, cliched dialogue, and a lead female character I felt kind of "meh" about (as in, I would've preferred another actress). Despite being a little slow to get into, though, it's actually quite a bit of fun, and there are some funny performances and lines throughout. Routh is perhaps too young for the work-weary Dylan, but he makes a good effort, and it's not a hardship to watch him. I didn't see "Superman Returns," but he's got a decent sense of comedic timing - a little less audible snorting while delivering one-liners is really all I as director would've asked out of him. Peter Stormare (Lucifer from "Constantine") is delightfully overwrought as the head werewolf, but I expect no different from him; Taye Diggs is head of the vampires, and he's having a lot of fun with that role, too.
As I said, I wasn't wild about Elizabeth (Anita Briem), the importer's daughter who calls Dylan to look into her father's death and accompanies him as the viewer's "civilian exposition questioner" through the rest of the movie. I felt like she was a little too wooden and underanimated compared to the rest of the cast; some of it was the writing, and some was the acting, IMO. I think the most entertaining character, though, was probably Marcus (Sam Huntingon). I see on IMDB that he played Jimmy Olsen to Routh's Clark Kent, so that may be why the two actors seemed to work so well in this. Marcus is an overeager assistant who wants to do more investigating, in the tradition of Shia LeBouef's character in "Constantine." It's not really a spoiler to say he's killed early in the movie, and because it was a zombie killing, he comes back as one of the Undead, with hilarious results (at one point he's attending a zombie support group with other awkward Undead in various stages of decay, in the back room of the local supermarket). He reminds me a lot of a young Thomas Lennon in this role for some reason.
I'm glad I only paid $5 to see this, but as I said, it wasn't a bad movie and worth some laughs. I will say the camera angles were pretty good, and the score was excellent - as it turns out, Klaus Badelt (the first POTC composer) did the music. He probably had the highest paycheck on this project. ;-)
"Dylan Dog" is based on a graphic novel about paranormal investigator Dylan Dog (duh), played by Brandon "I Was Superman For a Movie" Routh. He's the collectively elected/appointed investigator agreed upon by all the undead in New Orleans - werewolves, vampires, zombies - to solve cases when one of them steps over a line and causes trouble among each other or for the living; except, Dylan retired after some difficulty following the murder of his girlfriend and a snafu with the vampires. Now he and his young lackey, Marcus, survive with cheating-spouse detective work. Dylan is called out of retirement by the strange murder of a local importer over demon artifacts.
This is an odd little movie. It's definitely not A-list; more like C. There's overacting, some fuzzy camera shots, cliched dialogue, and a lead female character I felt kind of "meh" about (as in, I would've preferred another actress). Despite being a little slow to get into, though, it's actually quite a bit of fun, and there are some funny performances and lines throughout. Routh is perhaps too young for the work-weary Dylan, but he makes a good effort, and it's not a hardship to watch him. I didn't see "Superman Returns," but he's got a decent sense of comedic timing - a little less audible snorting while delivering one-liners is really all I as director would've asked out of him. Peter Stormare (Lucifer from "Constantine") is delightfully overwrought as the head werewolf, but I expect no different from him; Taye Diggs is head of the vampires, and he's having a lot of fun with that role, too.
As I said, I wasn't wild about Elizabeth (Anita Briem), the importer's daughter who calls Dylan to look into her father's death and accompanies him as the viewer's "civilian exposition questioner" through the rest of the movie. I felt like she was a little too wooden and underanimated compared to the rest of the cast; some of it was the writing, and some was the acting, IMO. I think the most entertaining character, though, was probably Marcus (Sam Huntingon). I see on IMDB that he played Jimmy Olsen to Routh's Clark Kent, so that may be why the two actors seemed to work so well in this. Marcus is an overeager assistant who wants to do more investigating, in the tradition of Shia LeBouef's character in "Constantine." It's not really a spoiler to say he's killed early in the movie, and because it was a zombie killing, he comes back as one of the Undead, with hilarious results (at one point he's attending a zombie support group with other awkward Undead in various stages of decay, in the back room of the local supermarket). He reminds me a lot of a young Thomas Lennon in this role for some reason.
I'm glad I only paid $5 to see this, but as I said, it wasn't a bad movie and worth some laughs. I will say the camera angles were pretty good, and the score was excellent - as it turns out, Klaus Badelt (the first POTC composer) did the music. He probably had the highest paycheck on this project. ;-)
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