DRACULA UNTOLD
Genre : Fantasy/ Action
Director : Gary Shore
Cast: Luke Evans, Sarah Gadon, Dominic Cooper
Rewriting a myth is in fashion, rediscovering the flawed characters has become a fad and in this scenario, Count Dracula was waiting to be taken back to the drawing board but what director Gary Shore and his team of writers have come up with makes one feel that the monster should have been left untouched. In an effort to humanise Dracula, they have robbed him of his characteristic bloody charm, reducing him to an anaemic figure angling for greatness. He is more interested in chewing the scenery than the neckline of his enemies.
A family man, Lord Vlad/ Dracula (Luke Evans), rules Transylvania with compassion. When the Turkish Sultan (Dominic Cooper) comes calling in search of children to recruit in his army, Vlad resists. He doesn’t have a force, so he decides to sacrifice his own child. When this doesn’t prove enough, he takes on the curse of cave vampire. You don’t expect so much nobility from a character notorious for its activities in the folklore.
And the way it is presented, makes him a generic soldier who could take on a huge army single-handedly. Shore takes the blood out of the staple action sequences. And Vlad’s soul searching moral dilemmas and the gloom that he generates through production design in Ireland fail to generate any real emotional upsurge. Evans looks the part but all he gets to do is making faces to a camera strategically positioned to capture his mobile dentures. But without the bite, this fantasy is reduced to an exercise in futility.
Bottomline : Drains the Dracula of his characteristic charm
