Mr. Movie review: ‘The Dark Tower’ gratefully shorter than the books
The Dark Tower is based on Stephen King’s eight-book series, featuring Idris Elba (the Thor movies) as the gunslinger Roland Deschain.
He lives on a world in an alternate universe and is trying to stop Matthew McConaughey’s the Man in Black from destroying the dark tower.
It sits at the center of all the universes and, once destroyed, it will allow demons to obliterate the other universes.
Jake Chambers is an adolescent from Earth. He is the key to either saving or destroying the universes depending on who uses him, Roland or the Man in Black.
The Dark Tower is not a very good movie. There is one positive. It’s a sequel to the last book of King’s series. I waded through the credits for an outtake that sets up the next movie and there wasn’t one. Therefore we may not be exposed to a sequel.
Key words: may not. Sometimes these films bring in so much money that producers can’t resist throwing another one together.
Speaking of thrown together, that’s the best possible definition of this film. King’s books borrow heavily from apocalyptic fantasy and horror stories. This movie does the same thing.
The principle actors — Elba, McConaughey and Tom Taylor who plays the kid — are all competent but are let down by a script that had too many hands on it before it became a movie. The first hand was J.J. Abrams who had it during his Lost period from 2007-09 but with no time on his hands it was passed to Ron Howard who had the project from 2010-15.
Then, Howard gave it to writer/director Nickolaj Arcel who wrote the screenplay for the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and co-wrote this screenplay.
The result is a bland exercise in movie making with the biggest disappointment being McConaughey who isn’t “awright, awright, awright’ as this villain. He — and this movie — are just about as interesting and intense as a Sesame Street episode.
Normally movies aren’t better than a book but here it’s the reverse. That’s only because instead of book after book which takes days to read, it’s a bit over 90 minutes and you’re done.
Movie name: The Dark Tower
Director: Nickolaj Arcel
Stars: Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Taylor, Katheryn Winnick, Jackie Earle Haley, Dennis Haysbert
Mr. Movie rating: 2 stars
Rated PG-13 for mature themes and violence. It’s playing at the AMC Kennewick 12, the Fairchild Pasco and Queensgate 12s and at Walla Walla Grand Cinemas.
5 stars to 4 1/2 stars: Must see on the big screen.
4 stars to 3 1/2 stars: Good film, see it if it’s your type of movie.
3 stars to 2 1/2 stars: Wait until it comes out on DVD.
2 stars to 1 star: Don’t bother.
0 stars: Speaks for itself.
This story was originally published August 3, 2017 at 2:59 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie review: ‘The Dark Tower’ gratefully shorter than the books."