The Dark Tower (2017) – In the ongoing battle between the darkness and light, the last Gunslinger teams up with a boy to save all of Creation.
Directed by: Starring Idris Elba, Matthew McConnaughy
Why I Liked It – Enough of the good stuff makes it through.
This movie should be right in my wheelhouse. Great source material from an author I like and respect (Stephen King), actors I like a lot (Elba and McConnaughy), a science fiction/fantasy world and the fight between good and evil. Sort of. M kind of movie.
Or it could have been. Because by the end, I had lost interest.
So many great possibilities, all squandered. King’s Gunslinger/Dark Towers series has a dedicated following, so the movie should have a built-in audience. I’ve spoken with fans of the books who were less than pleased when Elba was cast as Roland, the Gunslinger. There’s a racial tension aspect to the character in the book that goes straight out the window when you change his race. Annoying the fans by changing the hero is a bad place to start.
It’s not as if the actual movie would win them over. The first 20 minutes is s-l-o-w, and places most of its focus on the boy, Jake. As a newbie to this world, I want to understand the underlying concepts of the conflict that ensnares the boy. Instead, it’s all his family and his world, and people chasing him. And since I don’t understand why, why should I care?
Which is not to say there aren’t some nice moments. The action returns to our version of reality, and we get a lovely “fish out of water” scene with Roland and hot dogs. Think about the crew of the starship Enterprise in San Francisco. The scene isn’t given any place to grow and so it becomes a joke with a lame punchline. One more thing that drags this movie down.
I wanted to like this movie. I was looking forward to seeing all those good things come together in something fun and fascinating. What I got was a movie that limped along, despite the best efforts of its two stars. Idris Elba is fine as the conflicted hero who has lost everything for his ideals. Burnt out, he has turned his back on everything. Matthew McConnaughy is always fun when he gets to chew the scenery a little as a bad guy. He is a creepy extension of King’s character Randall Flagg (although Jamey Sheridan was even better in the 1994 TV miniseries of “The Stand”). The supporting cast was fine, and the director was as well.
But the movie never lives up to its potential. And that’s sad.
Rating – *** Worth A Look
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