The Dark Tower Review – Spoiler Free 🙂
The Dark Tower is a film which comes directed by Nikolaj Arcel and stars Matthew McConaughey, Idris Elba, Tom Taylor and Katheryn Winnick. The film is based on The Dark Tower novels which were written by Stephen King. It’s a science fiction/fantasy film about a boy, a gunslinger and a very bad wizard of sorts who wants to take over the world.
When first seeing the promotional material for this film and a couple of the trailers, I was hyped for a Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba film. I wanted to see these two go up against each other. I was interested in seeing what Matthew McConaughey could do as a villain and already know Idris Elba well for his gunslinger abilities from other movies. I don’t know anything about The Dark Tower book series, so I am I guess a fresh viewer to it all.
Once I was in there and the movie started going, I was in for a bit of a surprise. I thought that the film was more for adults, but it seems to me to be more for teens, or early teens to watch. Now that’s okay, I love films like The Hunger Games or Mazerunner. But this one just isn’t up there in terms of quality. It’s a bit slow paced, characters have awkward silences and moments that should be important or have great emotional impact, completely fall flat.
I could tell that there was a lot of material that needed to fit into this film’s story and maybe the book is really great. But for some reason something felt off here. There weren’t any issues with Matthew McConaughey or Idris Elba, in fact these two were great. I also enjoyed Katheryn Winnick. But the rest of the cast were completely forgettable. I don’t want to be too mean to poor Tom Taylor who was okay, but I think he was just too young for the role and i’m just not into watching films with kids of this age in them, I just did not buy his performance for the character he was playing.
My second gripe and it’s really my main one. I don’t want to spoil things at all, but certain scenes in this film should have some major emotional impact for the characters they happened to. But for some reason as a viewer, I just didn’t feel that. The tone of the film from the director is very dark and bleak and you’d think some emotion would come from that but it doesn’t. Worst yet is the dialogue, it’s just so simple and basic. I just could not get into this film.
It’s not a bad film though, I just feel that it’s incredibly mediocre. It’s got two big name lead actors and also Katheryn Winnick who I love to watch. But it doesn’t have much impact. There are some nice action scenes and the use of old western weapons and also the magic is interesting to watch. But that’s about it.
I’d say if you really must watch this, save yourself some money and see it when it’s on a discount day at your cinema. You won’t really be super disappointed with this film, but you likely won’t be blown away either. If you did love the book, I guess there’s a certain curiosity element about going to see the film and in that sense it might be fun. It’s still not too bad, just really very average. It’s possible if they did a sequel they could make it even better, but it’s hard to tell at this point. For younger teens, this is probably great, but for adults though, maybe not so much.
