Dracula Untold [Movie Review]

I have a joke for you.
What do you get when you have Bard (The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug) make a deal with Tywin Lannister (Game of Thrones)?

The Son of the Dragon (Devil).

Dracula.

Ok. So it wasn't funny. I'd say i'm sorry but I'm not. Why? I've essentially listed the star power in this movie by iconic roles they've previously portrayed.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Luke Evans plays Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Tepes / Vlad Dracula, son of the Dragon - which is what we're told Dracula means). Charles Dance plays the Master Vampire. That may go down as one of the least creative names for a speaking role ever.

Ok, let me explain my rating. I was torn between 3 and 3.5 stars for quite a while. I've gone with the 3.5 because there were a few things that I really liked, that for the most part offset some of the bad things.

Charles Dance keeps saying, "let the games begin."
I think he already missed his role in GoT. But he'll be back.

Dominic Cooper was once Howard Stark.

First off, the movie is oddly set in a relatively historical series of events. Vlad was given as hostage to the Turks as a child, he did fight them when they returned to Wallachia. In the movie they call Vlad the prince of Transylvania, when he was really prince of Wallachia. Yes, both modern day Romanian, but actually different. Transylvania did not join with Wallachia until 1918 forming the New Kingdom of Romania. Or click here. See some balance... good with some historical setting, bad with historical names.

Here is a weird aside. Lots and lots of fantasy / historical movies are shot in Romania and Croatia, that region. However this movie, actually set in the region was filmed in Northern Ireland, UK.     

It's little things like the details that get you in this movie. And the use of shaky-cam... how I laoth shaky-cam. For example, there are a few tiny irritating little continuity errors. The worst being that Vlad drinks blood from someone who later shows up without bite marks on the neck. Come on movie! The other bad bit is taht once again the main female role can simply be summed up as 'damsel in distress.' So cliche. Our hero, Vlad, is motivated by family. Motivated by this 'damsel in distress' wife and his son. Again we see women and children used only as emotional spring-boards for our hero's (or is it anti-hero here?) journey. 

Of course there are other characters in the movie beyond Vlad, his wife Mirena, their kid whose name I forget already, the Master Vampire, and Sultan Mehmed. However, like the kids name, I cannot for the life of me remember than names of any of the supporting cast. Not Vlad's companions, not the irritating Monk.  They were merely the trappings of a movie, unimportant characters.

Oh, and that bugged me. This is the first vampire movie in a long time to actually have vampire's fear crosses. Nothing about running water or garlic, but silver and crosses. If I had to complement one thing in Blade it was moving away from the crosses and water. Crosses seem to work kind of like silver in this movie, they shine really really bright to a vampire. Silver burns them, but that's it. Not even a bad burn, just mild irritation.

There are a few other silly moments. The fights were filmed in shaky-cam and cut oddly. There was a weird scene were Vlad is climbing Broken Tooth Mountain (or something like that ) on his second trip, and I turned to my friend and asked "Do you think they went up the hard route last time?" He was free climbing massive cliffs! It made no sense. Here's something else... the original Vlad (Dracula) is something of a sexual predator, I mean that is what the whole vampire metaphor is about, and yet in this movie... no sex. No nudity. Barely any hanky-panky at all, just silly fooling around with his wife like pulling her clothed into a tub. It seemed off for a Dracula story.

I've said all of that and, as usual, I did still enjoy it. It was also short... only about 90 to 100 minutes or so, excluding the 16+ minutes of previews (which included a preview for Interstellar... oh, that looks jaw dropping).

I am a touch worried, I saw somewhere that they originally titled the movie 'Dracula Year Zero,' does that mean there will be more? If so, how will they jive with the ending? Does every movie really need a sequel? Did I manage to write a review that never once had me type out the name of the movie?