In Theaters: The Wolfman

The story, such as it is, seems as bored and impatient with its own machinations as we will soon be: bloody massacres, pretty lady, sins of the father, yadda, yadda, yadda. The revelations about Lawrence's past -- as a boy he came upon his mother's body soon after her suicide; his grieving father sent him to an asylum -- add little depth to Del Toro's listless mien, a performance at deadly odds with Hopkins's swanning. When Lawrence is bitten by the beast after one of its rampages through Blackmoor, we wait for some metaphor behind the choice (he is the only one to survive the attack) to emerge. Aside from some loose jawing about the gypsy curse on the Talbot family, a few religious allusions, a swipe at the shapeshifting acting profession (Lawrence treads the boards in London), and ominous advice from Sir John about freeing the beast within, no compelling angle on the subtext of the werewolf -- the original avatar -- is offered. Though there is some satisfying vengeance in the bloodbath the ensues when Lawrence is captured and returned to the insane asylum where he was tortured as a youth, the burden -- despite a strenuous bout of exposition when father visits son in his cell -- seems utterly random.

Even Lawrence's fondness for Gwen is given no believable beastly truck, for despite lingering p.o.v. shots of her clavicle and wobbly lips, fondness is exactly what it amounts to. There may be more sexual frisson between Lawrence and the hot-eyed Scotland Yard detective (Hugo Weaving) sent to wrangle him. The only thing at stake in the ultimate showdown, where two werewolves meet in mid-air, wuxia-style, is your composure. While the transformation sequences capture some of the visceral horror of a body wracked from within, the werewolves themselves are a symptom of a film divided against itself: effects artist Rick Baker has given the beasts a retro feel -- think Chewbacca after a hard day on the shire -- that looks merely silly when submitted to the brutal paces of modern, CGI-enhanced combat. Tortured by vague demons and surrounded by incompetents, Lawrence's fate evokes an unintended empathy: by the third or fourth mawkish howl sent rippling across the moor, I felt that fur bag's pain.

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