peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2005 01 14 VanHelsing

Van Helsing

Fri, Jan 14, 2005./noise/movies | Link
Richard Roxburgh does a great Gabriel Byrne (End of Days-style), and this is his finest outing since Blue Murder. Hugh Jackman does the wolf thing again (or I guess lets the CGI do it for him, really). David Wenham camps it up as the geek assistant, in the Noah Taylor Tomb Raider tradition. I was wondering where it was filmed, but as they used the Lord of the Rings CGI equipment it doesn't really matter. The film itself is a pastiche of recent movies and European myths, a smooth integration of clumsy adapatations. For example, the collapse of the bridge in the first Lord of the Rings movie had far more moment, and there's not much going for the "don't talk, shoot"-line lifted lock-stock from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Who cares, for a blockbuster it ain't bad.