{"id":3361,"date":"2012-06-22T10:02:51","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T16:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=3361"},"modified":"2012-06-22T10:02:51","modified_gmt":"2012-06-22T16:02:51","slug":"abraham-lincoln-ashamed-of-this-movie%e2%80%8e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=3361","title":{"rendered":"Abraham Lincoln: Ashamed of this movie\u200e"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Well, at least nobody\u2019s going to wander into \u201cAbraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter\u201d wondering what they\u2019re getting into.
\nReally, too many movies hide behind meaningless come-ons. Who, exactly, are these \u201cPeople Like Us\u201d? What is \u201cThe Magic of Belle Isle\u201d? You can\u2019t tell the tales from the titles, and that\u2019s how the studios want it.
\nBut exploitation movies \u2014 \u201cSnakes on a Plane,\u201d \u201cHobo With a Shotgun\u201d \u2014 are made of sterner stuff. They tell you what they\u2019re going to give you, and then they do.
\nExcept what \u201cAbraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter\u201d mostly delivers is a long, ugly march through bad CGI, dull acting and dreadful writing.
\nThe story begins with the death of young Abraham\u2019s mother \u2014 to a vampire, it seems. (It\u2019s part of the story\u2019s re-jiggered mythos that only sinful victims seem to join their undead attackers; good people simply die.) So, once he comes of age, Abe goes in search of vengeance.
\nBut he soon meets a truly skilled vampire hunter. And he learns to go in search of justice instead \u2014 a widened quest that eventually leads him into politics, and then the presidency, to fight a vampiric horde that has infected most of the South.
\nThis is all nonsense, obviously, but it\u2019s rather garishly colorful nonsense. (I can imagine a campy prequel about James Buchanan, chastely fleeing the embraces of villainous succubae.) It could be fun, if the filmmakers had fun with it.
\nInstead \u2014 and this may be the only joke in the whole picture \u2014 they actually take it seriously.
\nIt\u2019s not just the dully earnest performances. (Star Benjamin Walker bragged that he prepared by reading several biographies of Lincoln; he would have better spent his time watching Hammer movies.) It\u2019s the pallid palette, the pasted-on chin whiskers, the flat dialogue.<\/p>\n

Walker, who may be best known for his stage work in the revisionist \u201cBloody Bloody Andrew Jackson\u201d \u2014 I guess a Rutherford B. Hayes sitcom is next \u2014 has no charisma as Lincoln, even when he\u2019s giving the Gettysburg Address. Dominic Cooper and Rufus Sewell are mere cutouts as friends and enemies.
\nThe movie doesn\u2019t even look good. Director Timur Bekmambetov is a mad visualist best known for the import vampire films \u201cNight Watch\u201d and \u201cDay Watch\u201d; he also made the wild if incomprehensible \u201cWanted,\u201d with Angelina Jolie taking baths in warm wax.
\nBut he\u2019s run out of ideas here. The first time he has a fanged vampire lunge at the 3-D camera, it\u2019s a cheap but effective trick; by the fifth time, it\u2019s an annoyance. And the poor CGI adds only the most unwelcome kind of unreality, in which animated armies clash by night.
\nIt\u2019s a shame because a livelier director \u2014 say an in-his-prime John Carpenter \u2014 would have found the nasty bad-taste jolt to this story. The politics, too; the idea of parasitical plantation owners as literal bloodsuckers is a juicy one the movie fails to exploit. And exploiting juicy ideas is sort of what exploitation movies are supposed to do.
\nInstead, what we get is a B movie treated like an A movie that mostly ends up being a zzzzzzzzzz movie.
\nAlthough it has one good line, toward the end. \u201cAbe!\u201d the nagging Mary Todd shouts. \u201cWe\u2019re going to be late for the theater!\u201d
\nAnd off the Great Emancipator rides for his tragic date with destiny.
\nBut hey, it could be worse. He could have been going to see this.
\nRatings note: The film contains gory violence, nudity and sexual situations