The familiar dreary settings flickered past as I stared out of the 85's window. The sky was grey, rain was inevitable but hey ho, it was Orange Wednesdays. It's the little things that keep you going.
The sticking point that particular evening was that the choice in film was almost as bleak as the weather. There was a touch of pathetic fallacy about the whole thing. It was between the Chernobyl Diaries and Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. Confronted with this tantalising selection me and The Bear whipped our iPhones out, reasoning that IMDB would be the arbitrator in the face of this dilemma. One scored 4.5 and the other 6.5- so either way we were in for a worldy. Logic dictated that we chose the higher of the two, so Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter it was.
The very B-movie esque notion of America's 16th president slaying the undead part time, mixed with the unflattering scores on t'internet, meant my expectations were very conflicted from the get go. My gut instinct told me this probably wasn't going to be worth the bus fare but my head provided a reasonable counter arguement:
Abe Lincoln + beard + axe - vampires = intriguing.
As long as it provided me with a steady supply of thrills and spills I would be content.
The fact I wish I had gone to watch Chernobyl Diaries probably signals the extent of my miscalculation.
The first 15 minutes are fairly easy to digest. It sets the time period nicely with a creative opening sequence and we are slickly transported back in time to Abe's childhood where the origins of his night stalking tendencies are (weakly) explained. The film does not take long to spring into life with the young Abe losing his cool at the sight of his black friend Will being visciously whipped for a misdemeanour he presumably did not commit. In fact, Abe goes beyond losing his cool and lunges at Mr. Whippy with a child sized axe. This signal of intent is presumably supposed to act as some sort of precursor to his "choppy" future but it just makes seem like an infantile delinquent. If I was Abe's father I would probably have had him sanctioned at that point which would have undoubtedly made for a much more interesting film. Instead Abe's father has to jump to his rescue, landing a sweet right hook on said whipper.
It is around this point slave owner Jack Barts (Marton Csokas) enters the fray. Bart is supposed to be deplorable and wicked but in all honestly is pretty uninspiring as one of the films lead antagonists. He looks a bit like an acid fuelled Fagin which is ironic, because I certainly got the sense my pocket had been picked after sitting through this film. The price of Abe's outburst is one mother, whom Bart slays in the dead of night presumably as an act of brutal authority. Sadly, the young Abe see's this fiendish action and from this point onwards Bart becomes his sworn nemesis.
The next time we see Lincoln he has transformed from the puny dock dweller into the burley Benjamin Walker and his narrative voice lets us know that "now his father is dead" he is to unleash his long awaited revenge. Abe's return to Barts dwelling does not go according to plan and it takes an intervention from Dominic Cooper's Henry to stop him being transformed into donner meat. Henry is like Blade in the fact that he is a vampire with a moral conscience, drinking blood from a chalice or the wretched instead of poor unsuspecting victims. However, Henry is unlike Blade in the fact he is largely unconvincing as someone who could tear s**t up. Cooper, whose most famous role up until this point was a heartthrob in Mamma Mia, is simply too pristine for the role. His one liners smell like a bag of Wotsits and he is simply too smarmy looking for a character who is supposed to have had a troubling past. Soon after Abe's ill fated revenge mission Henry (who can come out in the daytime unlike conventional vampires, thanks to the shoe polish like sun cream) becomes his reluctant teacher and soon moulds Big Abe into a slick vampire killing machine, all within the space of one very Rocky-esque montage and the brutal chopping of a sycamore.
After a few well polished duels the film introduces dull love interest Mary (the usually quirky and quippy Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and quickly hurries Abe the arse kicker on to Abe the politician. Barring one last semi entertaining brawl in the house of "Adam", as well as the ridiculous fight scene amongst the stampeding horses, we become subjected to a down trodden grey haired Abe for the next 35 minutes. This is when the tone of the film takes a horrible downward spiral and drops the formula that could have made it a nineteenth century Zombieland. The well paced fight scenes that take place in the dusty town of Springfield were drip feeding me satisfactory levels of adrenaline, but then POP that arc comes to an abrupt halt. As I watched the story about his son unfold, as well as the thrown together civil war sequences I forgot what film I was actually watching and stopped paying a particular amount of interest. One minute it was Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter, the next Mel Gibsons The Patriot. I felt that the introduction of sensitive subject matter betrayed the films whole feel, it seemed to ignore its own farcical nature and in doing so made the nonsensical, well...nonsensical!
Rating: I can't be arsed to talk about this film anymore. Two and Half Stars at best.
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