The Wolfman: Review By the_tall_guy

I didn't see this movie in theaters because I didn't have enough money to see it at the time. But I rented the movie around a month after it came out on DVD. I didn't hear a lot of good things about the movie, so I was expecting a pretty terrible movie.

After watching it once, I returned the movie and didn't think too much about it. I didn't have much to say about it, because I thought it was kinda bad. Then about a few weeks later, I decided to give the movie another chance. I went out and bought the DVD at Wal Mart, and I watched it one more time. And for some reason, I found it more appealing than before.

I gotta touch on two things that I really really liked about the movie:

First is the acting. I have never seen Benicio del Toro in any other movie, and I have never heard of him until this movie came out, and I expected that he was a newcomer, but then I did some research and found out he won an academy award for his performance in Traffic, and he's been in other movies like The Usual Suspects and Sin City, so that proved me wrong. I give props to him in this movie. I can't compare him to Lon Chaney, Jr. , because I have yet to see the original Wolfman, but his performance here is really good. He has this thing with his face (I can't quite tell what it is) that makes this character. He just seems like a tragic anti hero, and it works. I also love to see him as the werewolf. His body language with the creature is really good, and almost believable.

Anthony Hopkins was in this movie, and he did a good job at being a subtle villain. And what I mean by that is he isn't an over-the-top type of villain or a maniacal villain, but he plays it like he's a normal person, who just happens to be a werewolf (spoiler if you haven't seen the movie). He plays the part so calm like, instead of what other actors might of done and play him over the top (which wouldn't work). I applaud his performance.

I haven't seen Hugo Weaving in anything besides Transformers, so I didn't have anything to go on. I wouldn't consider him a villain, even though he's set up to be one when he appears. I would consider him an unfortunate third party person who ends up in the middle of all of this. He serves as a Dr. Sam Loomis character, in the sense that he's there to try to defeat the monster, but overall doesn't really do anything or has no purpose until the end. But that doesn't mean I didn't like his character. I actually enjoyed it in the same sense that I enjoyed Donald Pleasence playing Dr. Loomis. I give Hugo Weaving props, and I actually now want to watch other movies with him in it.

I haven't seen Emily Blunt in anything either (some of you might think that's crazy), but I liked her in this movie. She's attractive (which makes me wonder why she was interested in a person who looks like Benicio del Toro), and she's a really good actress. I thought she was a good choice for the love interest. The only thing that struck me weird about her is that she seemed to have gotten over Ben really fast and fell in love with Lawrence really fast. Maybe I'm seeing it wrong, but that's how I saw it.

The second is the makeup effects.

I congratulate Rick Baker for his design for the werewolves in this movie. They look so realistic; the fur, the teeth, the feet, the hands. Just really good makeup design. And all the cast members looked really good throughout the movie. I give props to Rick. Congratulations.

Now, I have to criticize two things about the movie:

The first is the plot outline.

It may just be me, but the whole way the movie unfolded was just pretty predictable. It seemed like I knew what was going to happen before it did happen, and that it gave me a sense of deja vu. It may just be me. The only two things I didn't really see coming was (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!) the father being a werewolf, and that ending. I didn't expect them to kill off Lawrence. Now, that may be because I haven't seen the original, but I didn't know that was going to happen.

The second is the use of CGI.

The CGI in this movie, apart from the transformations, seemed pretty much cheap and obvious. There is a scene at the Gypsy camp where the villagers try to kill the bear they accused of killing all these people, and the bear was completely computer generated. It didn't look real to me. I could tell how fake it was. There was also the final fight scene between Lawrence and his father. When Lawrence pushes his father into the fire (while in werewolf form) and the father steps out of the fire. It looked really bad, and when Lawrence cuts of the father's heat, that was worse. It was something that I didn't like, and one thing that I wish they would have spent a little more time on (although with the money they made from the movie, that would've be a financial mistake).

But the movie was an overall pleasure. I liked watching something that really felt like Gothic horror, which I haven't seen since Sweeney Todd (another movie I enjoyed). It wasn't the torture-porn type of movie that most horror movies have become nowadays, but it did have that excessive gore factor that is in most movies now. It's not a movie that you have to watch, and watch it over and over again, but it's a good movie to watch with your friends over the weekend. I recommend you see this movie sometime.