A moment comes towards theend of The Dark Tower—Stephen King'snovel series come to life on the big screen—when a thought occurs: "Are theyreally ending this already? What the hell?" Indeed, the long-percolatingproject from director Nikolaj Arcel (better known as writer for the originalSwedish production of The Girl with theDragon Tattoo) crams so very much into so very little time thatpractically everything suffers, not least of which is the pacing.
We follow a young boy namedJake (Tom Taylor) who, in the wake of his father's death, has started havingdream visions of a man in another world who's hell-bent on destroying this mysteriousdark tower that, like, stops demons from breaking into the multiversesomehow … or something. Of course, everyone from his mom to his therapist to hisshit-heel stepdad (or mom's boyfriend or whatever) doesn't believe that thevisions are real. Jake sure is persistent, though, and when he busts into thatother world through some sci-fi portal machine, it turns out he was right thewhole time and he's got psychic superpowers that amount to some sort oftelepathic communication ability.
An ancient battle was foughtand lost here between the Man in Black (a seemingly bored Matthew McConaughey) andthe Gunslingers, an ancient order of knights. It is eluded to that theymight be related to Arthurian legend somehow … or something. Roland (aka theGunslinger; Idris Elba, who makes a sincere go of it) is the last of the order, and having also lost hisfather (plus his buddies), he identifies with and joins Jake to stop thedestruction of the tower and kill the Man in Black.
If it sounds cool, that'sbecause it could have been. But with so much source material and a relativelyshort running time, we don't have a chance to care for anyone before the Man inBlack's cartoonish super-villainy gets out of hand. McConaughey plays this in atoo-calm-and-collected sort of way, which could say something about how he's soevil he doesn't even bother with emotions, but mostly it feels lacking indrama.
Oh, there are neat littlevisual tricks that show how the Gunslinger is super-good at reloading his gunsin various ways, but the threats never seem particularly perilous and the Manin Black's motives boil down to "he's just evil" … or something.
The Dark Tower couldhave easily been two-plus hours and far more awesome; hell, it could havebeen two or three movies. In fact, it should have been, but if we had to guess,it'll probably do pretty poorly and wind up on the cinematic ash heap forgottento time ... or something.
3
+ Super-cool idea
- Super-uncool execution
The Dark Tower
Directed by Arcel
With Taylor, Elba, McConaughey
Violet Crown, Regal, PG-13, 95 min.
