As we witness Hugo Weaving's Scotland Yard Inspector Aberline come to the realization that the local townsfolks' whispers of a werewolf are anything but superstitions, we see in him a swiftness in reaction. Not because he's hunted wolfmen before, but because he—like all of us watching him—already know the rules at play.
It's weird to think that most of our knowledge of werewolves come from a single movie, Universal's 1941 original The Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney, Jr., whose screenwriter Curt Siodmak brilliantly stole the vampire's traits for his own monster, namely the one bite infection and silver as its kryptonite. Nowadays people often mistake the silver bullet as part of traditional werewolf folklore, not realizing that they're actually citing Hollywood. It doesn't occur to the characters in this new remake that they're ahead of their time, jumping right at silver bullets without needing any legend to instruct them so. They just know. It's an effective shortcut between audience and story, because then the movie can get on with the carnage without having to establish anything—and I mean anything—which director Joe Johnston happily abuses.
Benicio del Toro is Lawrence Talbot, a man returning to his English countryside home to face his distant father, portrayed by Anthony Hopkins having a monster good time not doing much of anything except delivering his lines with a teasing glimmer of menace, as he's usually asked to do in this kind of role. Unlike Chaney's Talbot, Benicio's character is a brooding figure tortured by the gruesome deaths of his mother and brother, though he reserves room in his darkened heart for love. Local antique dealer Gwen, played by Emily Blunt, who in this version is Lawrence's dead brother's fiancee, falls for him while nursing his catalytic bite.
The script works overtime to add these labored dramatic conflicts, even setting it in Victorian era for the extra highfalutin goth, that Johnston mostly brushes aside anyway. The traditionalist plot leaves no room for much of anything interesting. The family and romantic relationships that drive the story are flaccid, a waste of the usually extraordinary cast. All the pious daddy issue detracts from the spectacle of seeing Wolfman flip a cab and chomp at its passengers, right?
It's obvious that Johnston is more interested in imageries, which is not necessarily a bad thing since there are a few pretty darn cool ones; iconic poses like Wolfman howling at the moon atop a Victorian ledge, stumbling near the foggy Thames or hovering above a frightened Gwen, chest puffed like the Big Bad Wolf.
This movie has a few solid computer-generated mayhem that ratchet up the fun—an asylum breakout scene is especially juicy—but they come across as a crutch for Benicio del Toro, who should have been allowed to go primal in this role. Without that sense of transformative theatricality (the kind Lon Chaney, Jr. delivered in the original) carrying the central figure, this is just a movie about random civilians being dispatched by a furry blur, when it very obviously has the makings of a tragic figure.
The "poor creature" is a familiar trope by now, and Wofman writers Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self refuse to stray far from this template. A savage beast, dragging collateral mayhem behind him, makes enemy of civilization, but a golden-hearted beauty sees the love within. This is the source of the tragedy. The beast must be killed to protect lives, but in doing so, we deny the lovers their happy ending.
The film even asks a question it thinks so profound that it bears repeating for the film's closing voiceover: "There's no sin in killing a beast, like there is in killing a man—but where does one begin and the other end?"
Very existential of them, but all I could think of was, why doesn't anyone ever try to shoot the Wolfman's kneecaps first?
"The Wolfman" opens February 12, 2010 and is rated R. Horror. Directed by Joe Johnston. Written by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self. Starring Anthony Hopkins, Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving, Art Malik.
