What can I say, this movie, although having some cool fight scenes, failed to live up to my expectations. When I first saw the trailer for the movie, it intrigued me and immediately made its way into my "movies to watch list". However, it just did not have the impact I thought it would.
Set in the mid 1800s, young Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) witnesses the death of his mother after she was bitten by a plantation owner who is also a vampire. He vows to seek vengeance when he becomes of age and when he finally plucks up the courage to do so and puts a bullet through the man's head, finds himself being beaten to death by a man with a bullet embedded in his eye socket.
He is then saved by the likes of Henry Sturges, a vampire hunter with a secret, who proceeds to tell him of the existence of vampires and after some persuasion, decides to train Lincoln to be a vampire hunter. The sheer absurdity of the idea that the 16th president of America and one of the most respected man in history as a vampire hunter is what was supposed to make this movie great for me.
However, despite this concept, the movie was serious, way too serious. Vampire Hunter's supporting could have added some auxiliary comedic juice to the intrinsically outlandish setup, but the decision to play everything straight dooms the movie to the trash heap of boring cinema. Many characters in the movie accepted the fact that vampires existed with little to no surprise. One such example would be Lincoln's friend and boss Speed. Upon hearing of the existence of vampires, not only did he not seem surprised by the revelation, he even agreed to travel with Lincoln to kill the vampires that kidnapped their friend.
Having some visually stunning and well-executed fight scenes, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is by no means an ugly movie. But visual virtuosity can only take a film so far and in this case, not very far at all.
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