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Released on: 6-1-2010
Released by: Universal
Director: Joe Johnston
Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving, Emily Blunt
Year: 2010
The Movie:
It may have lapsed in and out of development hell for a few years but Universal's much-hyped remake of The Wolfman finally arrived in theaters in February of 2010 and just a few short months later arrives on home video. The film did well at the box office, at least financially, and it's entertaining enough in its own way even if, as you'll see, the film panders to clichés and turns out to be remarkably predictable.
The film follows a stage actor named Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) who learns that his brother has gone missing. He takes the next train from London back to the family home in rural Blackmoor where he's greeted somewhat coldly by his father, John (Anthony Hopkins), who tells him that he is too late and that his brother was found dead the day before his arrival. Lawrence sets out to find out what exactly happened to his brother, as the locals suspect that he may have been mauled by a bear that the local gypsies keep, but of course, he soon learns that there's more to this than just an animal attack. When he hears the locals mumbling to themselves about his family's curse he lashes out but is later that night attacked by some sort of huge, horrifying animal.
His brother's widow, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt), is on hand to tend to his wounds but once he realizes that he has been cursed with lycanthropy, he sends her to London for safe keeping. After a few of the locals turn up dead, torn to shreds by Talbot's claws, he's captured by a local Scotland Yard officer (Hugo Weaving) - but will they be able to keep him and is he the one that they want in the first place? The plot grows thicker, but you won't have any trouble whatsoever figuring it out if you even half way pay attention to the film.
Beautifully shot by cinematographer Shelly Johnson, The Wolfman, directed by Joe Johnston, is a wonderful film to look at. The picture is full of thick, dreary, gothic atmosphere the likes of which have been hard to find in movies since Hammer's demise decades ago. The production values are excellent, from the rundown manor John Talbot calls home to the foggy London riverside where Talbot returns to his human form when the sun rises, the movie never looks less than fantastic. Pretty visuals, however, don't always make for a great movie. They help, sure, but sadly the story here telegraphs its surprise ending very early on. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that secret behind the Talbot family curse, nor does it take a clairvoyant to figure out that Lawrence and Gwen have got a thing for each other. As such, the film's finale, which should have felt like a riveting barrage of suspense, really winds up feeling a bit goofy, particularly when the computer generated effects make themselves apparent (to the film's credit, there are some sequences where the CGI is pretty much flawless and seamlessly integrated into the live action footage).
Parts of the movie feel like a video game. A chase scene that takes place across some rooftops in London is shot in such a way that you almost feel like you should be playing a racing game on your PS3 rather than watching a movie on it, and moments like this do take away from the film's strong points. Rick Baker's make up effects, however, are very impressive. The mix of his organic effects work with the CGI work used in the picture is very effective and the transformation sequences, while animated looking and not all that realistic maybe, are still pretty impressive. On top of that the film delivers some remarkably gory set pieces that are, for a mainstream studio picture, stronger than you'd probably expect (limbs are hacked off, heads are severed, and guts are pulled from stomachs - things like that) and the movie is all the better for it.
Performance wise, the film isn't bad. Del Toro is good as the brooding lead and Emily Blunt is the perfect choice for Gwen. They have enough chemistry together that you feel for them and they look good on screen together. Hopkins hams it up a little bit, skulking in the shadow and letting you know early on that he's more sinister than anyone else realizes. Weaving is fine as the cop, but he's not given all that much to do other than simply suspect there's more to the Talbot's then they're letting on. The characters, however, are all fairly thin. The script tries desperately to tie them into a key piece of family trauma that we witness through flashbacks, but it's not enough to really flesh these people out or make us care all that much for them.
What we wind up with is a lot of style and little substance. The film is visually remarkable and never short of excellent in the visuals department, but doesn't offer a whole lot more than that to keep us glued to the screen. Ultimately, this remake of a fairly renowned, if flawed, Universal classic is little more than passable entertainment.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Universal presents The Wolfman in an excellent AVC encoded 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen 1080p presentation that seems to accurately reflect the dark color scheme that the filmmakers were going for. Detail is frequently very strong and periodically stunning while color reproduction is nice and natural looking though, as mentioned, it leans towards the dark side of things which is fitting given the picture's setting and landscape. As you'd expect, there isn't any dirt, debris or print damage anywhere to be seen while the disc is free of compression artifacts and edge enhancement. Some grain is intentionally apparent and it gives the movie a sort of gritty atmosphere that works fairly well alongside the darker colors. Skin tones look good, if a little pale (again, a stylistic choice to be sure) though every once in a while the contrast looks just a little bit shaky. Otherwise, this is pretty much a flawless presentation, the movie does look fantastic in high definition and you can really appreciate the detail in the film and the cinematography thanks to Universal's efforts in this department.
The primary audio track on this release is an excellent English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track but standard definition DTS 5.1 Surround Sound offerings are provided in Spanish and French while subtitles are available in all three languages. But let's get back to the DTS-HD mix - it's pretty damn impressive. If it has one fault it's that sometimes some of the quieter, dialogue driven scenes are a bit low in the mix compared to the fairly bombastic action-oriented scenes which will likely result in viewers reaching for the remote and making some adjustments now and then. The scene in which Lawrence arrives home and speaks to his father who is standing on the staircase is a prime example - if you don't turn it up, you won't hear it all that well. These moments are thankfully few and far between, however, and the rest of the mix is amazing. The scenes in which the werewolf carves his way through the gypsy camp features all manner of awesome sound effects that come at you from all directions while guttural growls and snarls and the thudding of the beast's paws as he rampages through the area provide plenty of strong low end bass response. Danny Elfman's quirky, gothic score sounds perfect, again, spread out nicely across the entire soundscape. Aside from those few instances where the dialogue is a bit low, there's really nothing to complain about here at all.
Universal has crammed a lot of extra content onto this disc, but the way in which they've done it is bound to irk some, particularly those who don't have web-enabled players. But more on that in a bit. Universal's nifty U-Control functionality is once again built into this release, though it's available only over the theatrical cut of the film. There are two different options provided here, the first of which is Legacy, Legend And Lore. When enabled, this will allow you to compare the film to different other werewolf movies that have been made over the years, from the 1941 Universal Classic to Hammer's Curse Of The Werewolf up to more modern films like An American Werewolf In London. Along the way, the track touches on influences that made it into this movie and different ways in which the film tries to expand its characters and settings. It's pretty interesting and horror movie aficionados will probably get a kick out of it.
The second U-Control track is called Take Control and when you enable it, you'll be able to check out clips with special effects guru Rick Baker, effects supervisor Karen Murphy and cinematographer Shelly Johnson who will stand in front of a screen and tell you about the work that they did on the picture. It's reasonably interesting as it gives us a look behind the scenes of the film and provides a fair bit of detail on the different aspects of the production that the three different participants were involved in. This material isn't available constantly, it just pops up at appropriate moments throughout the movie, but it's worked into the feature really effectively and quite interesting to play around with.
From there we move on to the featurettes that have been included on the disc, starting with Return Of The Wolfman, a twelve minute segment which gives us a fairly insightful look at the different characters that populate the film, how they relate to one another, and how the film wanted to put the storytelling before the set pieces. More interesting is The Beast Maker, which is a twelve minute documentary in which Rick Backer explains in quite a bit of detail how he created the different make up and prosthetic effects used for the werewolf scenes. Baker talks about what worked and was used in the film but also explains what didn't work, why it didn't work and why it in turn wasn't used. Good stuff. Transformation Secrets is a fifteen minute piece that compliments the last featurette well in that it, as the title implies, explains how the transformation scenes were handled and rendered using computer technology, and how that same computer technology was used to 'enhance' some of the practical effects work that Baker created for the film. The last featurette is a nine minute piece entitled The Wolfman Unleashed and it gives us a look at the stunts that were pulled off for the film. If you pay attention during the end credits you'll see a lot of people listed in the stunt crew section and this piece shows why as it takes us through the choreography of a few key set pieces.
Rounding out the extras is roughly eleven minutes of deleted scenes (which includes some great footage of Talbot roaming the streets in full on wolfman mode) and two alternate endings that really don't differ much at all from the one used in the movie. The Blu-ray disc also features some classy animated menus, and chapter selection. A second disc includes a digital copy of the film so you can take it with you on your iPod or whatever other portable device you might own. The trailer for the feature itself has not been included on this release for whatever reason, but all of the extra features on the disc are presented in high definition. The movie has also been tweaked with D-Box encoding for those who want to shake in their seats while watching the movie.
For those of you with Blu-ray Live capability, Universal has built in some interesting connectivity enabled extra content on this release as well, the biggest and best being the ability to go online and watch the original The Wolfman in high definition. At the time of this writing, however, connectivity was spotty and the movie would kick you back to the menu after a few minutes. This is an interesting idea, but obviously not a perfect science as of yet. What little of the movie that did play, however, looked pretty good (despite a lot of obvious compression) in AVC encoded streaming high definition and it was in its original fullframe aspect ratio. It sure would have been nice to have had t his included on an actual, physically pressed disc, as those who don't have a web connection or don't want a web connection running to their Blu-ray player are obviously going to miss out. On top of that, the movie would have probably looked considerably better playing off of a Blu-ray disc than it does in streaming format, simply because of the compression issues, not to mention the buffering and loading issues that may or may not be experienced during playback (if it will playback for you at all).
You can also access, via Blu-ray Live, various social media related tools, such as applications for Facebook and Twitter, if you're into that in addition to a few different, unrelated trailers.
The Final Word:
The Wolfman is a pretty mediocre film. There are flashes of excellence apparent throughout and visually the movie is an impressive one, but the story is predictable and prone to dabbling in clichés. That said, Universal has rolled out the red carpet for the Blu-ray release, offering up excellent audio and video quality and loading up the disc with plenty of extra features.