The Dark Tower Review

            This past weekend we saw the release of the long awaited Dark Tower film and pretty much every critic and their mother hates it.  It has a 18% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a 34/100 on Metacritic and upon viewing the film it’s not at all difficult to see why.  The characters are underwritten, the action scenes lack any sense of special, the plot is generic and cliched as hell, it’s incredibly cheap looing and there are many points where longtime fans of the novels are going to wince in pain and disgust.  But you know what?  When all is said and done, it’s actually not that bad.  It’s disposable and the franchise certainly deserves better but it’s not quite the abysmal train wreak that some people are making it out to be.

            The plot is a VERY loose adaptation of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger and has been softball pitched as a quasi-continuation of the novels, (if you’ve read the books then that description will make a lot more sense), as it takes elements of the first book and reworks them into an original plot.  The story begins with a boy names Jake Chambers having visions of The Man in Black using children with psychic abilities as a power source for a weapon that is launching attacks against a structure known as The Dark Tower; a place that in this continuity protects a vast multiverse from “the darkness” that is beyond and constantly trying to consume it.  Not long after, agents of The Man in Black attempt to kidnap Jake as a new power source for this weapon, forcing him to flee and seek out The Man in Black’s mortal enemy, Roland, The Last Gunslinger in a dimension known as Mid-World.  Together the two of them will attempt to track down The Man in Black, find his base and weapon, destroy it and kill him in the process.

            When watching the film, it becomes clear that all of its problems, (outside of massive deviations from the source material), stem from two sources; it’s was clearly made on an incredibly low budget and is far too short.  The main issue is that due to its short runtime none of the characters are properly developed.  The Man in Black, for example, is about as generic of a mustache twirling bad guy as you can possibly get.  He kills and tortures people seemingly just for fun and we’re never told why he wants to destroy The Tower and let in the darkness that it’s holding back.  We don’t get any explanation as to where his powers come from, why they are so strong, why they don’t work on Roland or what their actual limits are.  He just all around lacks any meaningful writing that tells us anything about him outside of the fact that he’s a bad guy doing bad things.  Luckily the character is somewhat salvaged thanks to Mathew McConaughey’s performance.  It’s not going to be his next Oscar nominated performance to be sure but he brings enough raw charisma, sleazy guile and scenery chewing ham to the role that he at least makes it entertaining to watch if nothing else.

            Likewise, we have Idris Elba as Roland.  Like McConaughey, Elba has enough raw charisma to carry you through every scene he’s in and feels very well suited to the role.  The problem comes in the form of his so-called arc.  You see at the start of the film it’s pretty clear that he can’t stand Jake and is only going after the Man in Black out of a desire for revenge as opposed to defending The Tower, (in this continuity the Gunslingers are sworn to protect it).  By the time the film ends, however, it’s clear that his commitment to defend The Tower has been renewed and has become fond of Jake.  The problem is that you really don’t buy this arc.  The transition just kind of happens and seems to have been spurred by a tragedy midway through the film but seems to happen over the course of five minutes and is completely unbelievable.  Luckily Elba is a good enough actor where you can at least buy his performance but the actual writing and pacing of the film leaves you feeling as if you missed a scene or two somewhere.

            The big weak link in the three leads, however, is Tom Taylor as Jake Chambers.  Like Elba and McConaughey he has enough raw charisma to get you through the picture but ends up functioning more as a plot point then then a character.  What little character he does have, unfortunately, amounts to the generic wonder kid kind where he is the most special kid in the universe and only he can do this and that and we’ve already seen this a million times before.  For the most part, however, he’s only in the film to lead Roland to The Man in Black, guide him through New York, and eventually be rescued by him at the film’s climax.

           As mentioned earlier, the other major thing that held the film back was clearly its budget.  While watching the film it’s very clear that it was shot on a limited budget and I wasn’t surprised to find out that it was made on about 60 million dollars.  The biggest victims of this are the action scenes.  In total, the film has about four big action scenes and most ended up coming out as average at best despite having some cool toys to play with.  Early on, for example, Roland and Jake have to fight a monster from “the darkness” that has broken through the Dark Tower’s protective shield, which in theory sounds like a cool monster for them to fight and give us some sense as to what they’re up against should the Tower fall.  Unfortunate it mostly amounts to Roland struggling from being pinned to a tree while Jake hides in some old carnival equipment before Roland guns it down.  At the end of the film we get Roland’s final confrontation with The Man in Black where we see a cool range of their abilities but the whole thing takes place in a narrow hallway with the two shooting and throwing things at each other.  While none of these action scenes are bad, per say, it’s very clear that at one point they were meant to go on longer and be far more imagined and epic in scale then they ended up being.

            Ironically, however, one of the film’s biggest hindrances is arguably its biggest saving grace.  As mentioned earlier the film is rather short, clocking in at around 95 minutes.  Because of this it’s fast paced enough to where you don’t notice its flaws as much while you’re watching it.  The whole production is quickly paced and keeps thing moving fast enough so you’re never actually bored.  And that actually sums up the entirety of the film.

            Everything about it is fundamentally flawed but it’s never boring.  Our three lead characters lack any real depth but they’re so well played that you enjoy watching them.  The action is a pale shadow of what it could have been but it’s still well done enough to where you can’t really say anything bad about it.  And finally, the plot is a cheap generic mess but its fast paced and short enough to where you’re never bored.  Ultimately, it’s a disposable film and The Dark Tower franchise deserved far better but as an early August matinee show goes you can certainly do worse.

All Around

5/10

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