A Behanding in Spokane (Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

First, let it be said that Christopher Walken is a wonder from start to finish: quirky, eccentric, unpredictable, understated, and menacing. And that Sam Rockwell, Anthony Mackie, and Zoe Kazan, though not in Walken’s inspired league, are not exactly slouches either. This is a blue-chip cast.

But though my admiration for Martin McDonagh has, till now, been boundless, I’m sorry to report that “A Behanding in Spokane” falls considerably short of his best.

The Irish playwright’s first play set in America bears all his trademark characteristics: macabre black comedy, outrageous violence, and improbable tonal shifts, but the basic premise here just doesn’t hold water.

Walken is Carmichael, a wild-haired derelict who’s checked into a second-rate hotel. As a youngster, he lost his hand when hillbilly hoodlums held it under a roaring train, and then had the audacity to wave him goodbye with the disembodied appendage.

He has obsessively spent the intervening years trying to find it, even though he knows it would be useless to him.

A couple of pot-dealing con artists, Marilyn (Zoe Kazan) and Toby (Anthony Mackie) have sold him a shriveled black hand they claim is his. (They’ve actually stolen it from a museum.) He didn’t fall for the ruse, and they are now his prisoners.

Mervyn (Rockwell), the loony receptionist, comes up to investigate when Carmichael fires a gun, and thereafter continues to be a prying, obstinate presence, not particularly concerned about his safety. In fact, loner and outsider that he is, he wouldn’t be averse to a little excitement.

The problem with the work is that Marilyn and Toby – drawn as comically battling lovers – are dramatically implausible. When Toby, early on, attempts to leave the hotel on the ruse of returning with the “real” hand, the annoyingly clueless Marilyn gives him such grief about being left along with Carmichael, it prevents their chance to get help, the first of a string of improbable behavior from these two.

Carmichael ends up handcuffing the couple to the pipes and, while he goes off to find the putative real hand, sets a long-burning candle on a can of gasoline

A lengthy monologue for Mervyn, well performed by Rockwell, delivered in front of the curtain, vaudeville-style, is not particularly amusing, even as it conveys some necessary exposition about his character.

McDonagh’s dialogue bears his trademark style, and ultimately, a compassionate tone prevails, but his constant repetition of the f-word and its variants often seems a poor substitute for genuine wit.

John Crowley, a McDonagh veteran, knows the playwright’s rhythms and directs a well paced, intermissionless evening. Scott Pask’s set, as lit by Brian MacDevitt, conveys just the right creepy desolation.

Be warned that severed hands (of rubbery consistency) abound, but all in all, the violence in “Behanding” is mainly suggested.

(Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 West 45 Street, (212) 239-6200 or www.telecharge.com)

The Tempest (The Bridge Project)

By Harry Forbes

This season’s second collaboration between BAM, The Old Vic and Neal Street Productions, again under Sam Mendes’ quite wonderful direction is, if anything, even more striking than the first, “As You Like It.”

“The Tempest,” which will now run in repertory with the other play, is less frequently performed, and rather more difficult to pull off. It was Shakespeare’s last completed play, and far more enigmatic.

It is to Mendes’ credit that his production plays with such crystalline clarity, even where the Bard was vague on motivation and specific incident.

Of course, one of the great pleasures of repertory is watching first-rate actors stretch in disparate parts. Stephan Dillane, so excellent as the world-weary Jaques, assumes the heavy-duty role of Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, banished years before from his kingdom by his evil brother Antonio (Michael Thomas). Though he might, on paper, seem too young for the role, he makes the role his own.

Prospero was, years before, set to sea with his infant daughter Miranda and, through the intercession of his good counselor Gonzalo (Alvin Epstein), and with his books of magic, which he now mastered after his years of exile on this island.

He rules the place assisted by his beloved sprite Ariel (Christian Camargo) and the base and treacherous Caliban (Ron Cephas Jones). Presumably spurred by vengeance (and a desire to give his daughter a suitable mate), Prospero contrives a shipwreck which brings Antonio; Alonso (Jonathan Lincoln Fried), the king of Naples; Alonso’s son Ferdinand (Edward Bennett); Alonso’s ambitious brother Sebastian (Richard Hansell); and their heavy-drinking butler (Thomas Sadoski); jester Trinculo (Anthony O’Donnell); and others to his shores. They have been scattered at sea, however, and not all are aware of the others’ survival.

Dillane has just the right magisterial manner, and etches a loving father and benevolent ruler. He’s particularly poignant in the play’s final moments when he abjures his magic. Famous actors of the past have given Prospero’s speeches with more grandiose poetry, but Dillane’s reading of “We are such stuff as dreams are made of” and the other famous bits still touch the heart.

Surely, there is nothing more satisfying in all of drama than Shakespeare’s scenes of forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption. “As You Like It” ends with one, but that in “The Tempest” is even more wondrous. Alonso finds the son he thought drowned, and Prospero forgives his errant brother (albeit not without a momentary hesitation), and reconciles with Alonso and those who conspired against him. Mendes stages it most beautifully here, the audience watching in rapt silence.

The American Christian Carmargo, the love-sick Orlando, is now Ariel, not the usual airy spirit, but a tall, striking presence, dressed mostly in black, but morphing into whatever Prospero calls for: one moment wearing an evening gown, the next spouting tremendous wings. He speaks the text with as much assurance as the Brits, and confirms again he’s a true classical actor.

His real-life wife Juliet Rylance plays Miranda as memorably as she did Rosalind. Her wonderment at beholding Ferdinand, the first man she’s laid eyes upon besides her father, is most delightful.

Thomas got to play both the good and bad Dukes in “As You Like It,” and he’s fine as a different sort of bad guy here.

O’Dowell (dressed by Catherine Zuber is a plaid suit) is a particular delight in his comic role, and his scenes with Sadowski are genuinely funny, not tedious as the lower-class scenes can sometimes be in Shakespeare. As they plot with Caliban (Cephas Jones who fully inhabits the bestial nature of the lustful and duplicitous creature) to overthrow Prospero. Caliban conjures a ghostly veiled image of Miranda whom he proposes Stephano will wed, one of Mendes’ clever bits of business.

Special mention must be made of veteran Alvin Epstein who, like fellow Yank Carmago, does full justice to the language, and creates a most sympathetic Gonzalo.

Mendes has brought myriad special touches to the work. When Prospero relates their past to his blindfolded daughter, Mendes has encouraged dangerously long pauses, as Prospero wrestles with his clearly painful emotions. The first encounter between Miranda and Ferdinand is deliciously staged. Later, the wedding sequence is a jewel in itself.

The backdrop of Tom Piper’s set (beautifully lit by Paul Pyant) is more or less as it was in “As You Like It,” though Prospero’s magic circle of sand is here the main playing area. At one point, Caliban emerges, miraculously, from beneath the sand.

Mark Bennett’s song settings are, as before, simply lovely. Amusingly, Sadoski enters singing the melody of the Bobby Darin hit “Beyond the Sea” paralleling Dillane’s surprising Bob Dylan turn in “As You Like It.”

Choreographer Josh Prince provides a delightful dance for that wedding sequence.

The play – one of Shakespeare’s shortest – is given without intermission. Two hours and fifteen minutes is a bit long to go without a break, but matters of thirst and bladder notwithstanding, interest never flags.

Both plays will tour Europe and Asia and open at London’s Old Vic in June.

(BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, 718-636-4100 or www.bam.org; through March 13)

Cop Out (Warner Bros. Pictures)

By Harry Forbes

There’s the kernel of an amusing premise here: longtime NYPD partners tracking down a valuable baseball card going up against Mexican drug dealers. And Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan must have seemed a good team on paper
.
But “Cop Out” is unrelentingly vulgar (a yucky scatological discourse gets my vote as the low point), Morgan’s character annoyingly foul-mouthed, stupid and self-absorbed (even as we’re meant to view him as basically a good guy), and there’s far too much heavy-duty violence for a presumed comedy.

On the ninth year anniversary of working together, Jimmy Monroe (Willis) and Paul Hodges (Morgan) have been suspended for a month without pay for botching up yet another assignment. Jimmy needs the money to pay for his daughter’s (Michelle Trachtenberg) wedding, so his ex-wife’s (Francine Swift) smarmy husband (Jason Lee) won’t have to do it.

Jimmy decides to sell his extremely rare 1952 Andy Pafko card (he’s heard it can fetch up as much as $83,000), but the dealer is held up, and the thieves (stoner Dave, played by Seann David Williams, one of two masked men) abscond with the card.

It ends up in the baseball collection of vicious baseball-loving drug kingpin Poh Boy (Guillerno Diaz) whose Mercedes (and its valuable though mysterious contents) goes missing. He eventually makes a deal with the Jimmy and Paul: he’ll return the card, if they find his car.

Kevin Smith inauspiciously directs the first film he didn’t write. Robb Cullen and Mark Cullen have the dubious honor of concocting this dubious homage to the buddy cop films of the 1980s.

Morgan’s shtick is that he parrots dialogue from classic movies, and frets that his wife (Rashida Jones) is cheating on him with the next door neighbor. Willis pretty much plays it straight as a long suffering but tolerant guy who just wants to be a good dad to his loving daughter.

Scott has some mildly amusing moments with his stream-of-consciousness back seat ramblings, as first he’s taken into custody, and then they co-opt him to help retrieve th4e precious card.

Kevin Pollak and Adam Brody are OK as detectives Hunsaker and Mangold, trying to play it straight and lord their by-the-books methods over disgraced Jimmy and Paul, but by the end, get a lesson in humility. Pollak proves a far better movie star impersonator than Morgan in one pearly moment when he mimics Robert DeNiro.

The attractive Ana de la Reguera makes a generally sympathetic Mexican kidnap victim, but did anyone really think it was funny to have her character spewing non-stop (subtitled) expletives? On the other hand, Susie Essman, as a woman whose house is burgled, reprises her foul-mouthed “Curb Your Enthusiasm” routine with amusing results.

A handful of funny bits like that, and the always watchable presence of Bruce Willis, who manages to keep his dignity throughout, are the minor attractions of this otherwise dismal flick.

(Rated R by the MPAA for pervasive language including sexual references, violence and brief sexuality.)

Yank! (York Theatre Company)

By Harry Forbes

After mountings at the NYMF in 2005, Brooklyn’s Gallery Players in 2007, and several developmental stagings at the York Theatre Company, “Yank” – subtitled “A World War II Love Story” – receives its most polished production yet at York Theatre Company.

I didn’t catch it at NYMF, but the terrific Gallery version – with three of the stars of the current production, Bobby Steggert, Nancy Anderson, and Jefrey Denman, and also directed by Igor Goldin – already signaled that this was a show ready for the big time, an impression confirmed by all the subsequent stagings.

Though it still clocks in at two and a half hours, the pacing is tighter, and the production elements slicker. But the elements that made it so appealing before have not been lost.

Brothers Joseph (music) and David (book and lyrics) Zellnick have written a wonderfully accessible score – old fashioned in the best sense – and the narrative is consistently compelling. The intimacy of the York playing space is a plus, but I’ll bet it would open up just fine if it were ever to transfer to a Broadway house.

Largely inspired by Allan Berube’s “Coming Out Under Fire,” the nonfiction history of gays in the military during World War II, David Zellnick’s book concerns a bashful soldier named Stu (Steggert) and his crush on the handsome Mitch (Ivan Hernandez) who takes the bullied Stu under wing, and falls for him, despite a fiancé back home.

Their relationship is strained when the embarrassed, sexually ambivalent Mitch pulls back after a tentative kiss, and Stu is soon after recruited by “Yank” magazine reporter Artie (Denman) to become a photographer for the magazine and, in the song “Click,” offers his new assistant a primer on the ways of gay life – the Y’s, the bars -- in the ranks.

Stu hooks up again with Mitch when he and Artie finagle a profile of Stu’s former company. Trouble ensues, however, when one of the soldiers (Andrew Durand) catches the couple in a clinch.

David Zellnick’s intelligent dialogue and Goldin’s naturalistic staging give a realism to the army scenes, and despite the book’s obvious sympathies, avoids the political and overt references to today’s “don’t-ask-don’t-tell controversy.

There are echoes of Sondheim here and there, but songs like “Remembering You,” “Betty” (a paean to Grable, Rita, Lana, and the rest), “A Couple of Regular Guys” genuinely evoke the WWII era. There’s not a clinker in the bunch, and music director John Baxindine’s five-piece orchestra provides deft accompaniment.

The delightful Nancy Anderson has an impressive showcase, playing a range of roles in Tricia Barsamian’s colorful period duds. In spot-on 1940s style, she sings the Zellnicks’ catchy pastiche numbers, the jivey “Saddest Gal What Am,” the soulful “Blue Twilight,” and the Jeanette MacDonald-inspired “The Bright Beyond,” among them. In all of these, as well as her turn as a butch army officer sympathetic to the guys, she delivers savvy characterizations.

If there was one plus about the premature closing of “Ragtime” it was freeing up Steggert to return to his pivotal role. Just as brilliant as he was in “Ragtime” playing the radicalized Younger Brother, he inhabits Stu with honesty and truth. As in previous incarnations of the show, he really owns this part, playing with an understated naturalism that is most engaging.

Steggert is also the show’s narrator, a present-day San Franciscan who finds Stu’s war journal in a junk shop, and morphs into the Stu character.

Hernandez has just the right looks and easy masculinity for the handsome Mitch whose unease with his sexuality seems in sharper focus than in the Gallery mounting.

Denman nails the smooth-talking Artie, and provides the lively choreography, including a dream ballet for Mitch and Stu, danced by Denis Lambert and Joseph Medeiros respectively. A couple of nifty, full-out tap numbers gives the show variety and lightens the tone at just the right moments.

The others in the company: Durand, Tally Sessions, David Perlman, and Christopher Ruth. Todd Faulkner, Zak Edwards, and Medeiros as swishy guys in the secretarial pool who call themselves Scarlett, Melanie, and India are all marvelously versatile, with some impressive doubling of roles.

Designer Ray Klausen’s sliding panel set -- cannily lit by Ken Lapham -- effectively conveys the scene shifts.

The show got a rousing hand from York subscribers at a recent Saturday matinee, affirming that the show’s appeal is broader than its specialized subject matter might suggest.

“Yank!” is bound to have a life beyond its limited season here, but you'd do well to catch this beauty of a show now.

(The York Theatre Company at St. Peter’s, 619 Lexington Avenue, 212-935-5820 or www.yorktheatre.org; through March 21)

The Ghost Writer (Summit Entertainment)

By Harry Forbes

It’s been five years since Roman Polanski’s last film (“Oliver Twist”), but the director has lost not a jot of his talent for creating a deliciously ominous sense of foreboding, as this absorbing political thriller demonstrates. If the story – adapted by Polanski and Robert Harris from the latter’s novel, "The Ghost" -- doesn’t quite provide the slam-bam payoff one would expect at the end of its two-plus hours, this still ranks as a superior thriller.

Ewan McGregor plays the titular unnamed writer who agrees to polish up the autobiography of former British prime minister Adam Lang (convincingly played by Pierce Brosnan) after his predecessor, a long time colleague of Lang, drowns during a ferry crossing between the mainland and a Martha’s Vineyard-like island off the eastern seaboard. (The film was actually shot mostly in Germany.)

The mercurial Lang, it soon develops, may have had a hand at turning over suspected Pakistani Al Qaeda terrorists to the CIA for torture, and Lang’s former Foreign Affairs Secretary (Robert Pugh) is helping build a case against him as a war criminal. Suddenly, these allegations are all over the media.

The writer has a mere month to finish his task, but he stays at a nearby hotel to maintain his objectivity. When, however, a glowering stranger (David Rintoul) in the hotel bar aggressively inquires about Lang’s whereabouts, and the writer returns to his room to find it in disarray, Lang’s personal assistant (and, it would appear, mistress), Amelia (Kim Cattrall, quite different than her Samantha role on “Sex & the City”) informs the writer he’d better remain on the premises of Lang’s secluded house.

Once ensconced, he gets to know Lang’s wife Ruth (Olivia Williams), a politically savvy lady with (surprise) a resemblance to Cherie Blair, who shares her confidences with him, and eventually finagles her way into his bed.

As more questions are raised about Lang, his background, his true political convictions and so on, the writer finds his curiosity mounting despite his earlier assertion that, after all, he’s not an investigative reporter.

The always reliable McGregor holds everything together, much as he did “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” playing a sort of everyman pulled into extraordinary events. He’s on screen almost every minute – a sympathetic, likable presence -- and we watch what happens through his eyes.

Williams is top notch as the tart wife. Smaller roles are well taken by Tom Wilkinson as Lang’s Cambridge crony who clearly knows more than he’s letting on. The scene between him and McGregor is one of the tensest in the film, along with the cat-and-mouse car sequence that follows.

Other roles are smartly taken by Timothy Hutton as Lang’s DC lawyer, John Bernthal as the writer’s agent, and 93-year-old Eli Wallach as an “old man” who sheds some expository light on the death of the ghost’s predecessor. (You won’t be surprised to learn it was neither an accident nor suicide.)

As is typical of the genre, the McGregor character does sometimes venture into some dangerous predicaments that have you wondering why he’d take the risk, so some suspension of disbelief is required.

But Polanski’s assured style helps in that regard. The aforementioned car sequence, and late in the film, the passing of a crucial note through a crowd are but two of many brilliantly executed sequences, and he maintains a pervasive sense of gloom and isolation at the Lang compound. The weather is unremittingly bleak or stormy.

The reliable Alexandre Desplat’s moody score adds to the paranoid ambiance.

Not so thinly veiled allusions to George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and Halliburton abound along with predictable conspiracy theories. Indeed, Harris – a former political journalist – knew Blair well, though the writer denies any political agenda.

Plot holes, character motivation, political subtext and Polanski’s current legal entanglements aside, this is an enjoyably old-fashioned suspense film in the Alfred Hitchcock manner, and a late-career high point for the filmmaker.

(Rated PG-13 by the MPAA for language, brief nudity/sexuality, some violence and a drug reference.)

Valentine’s Day (New Line Cinema)

By Harry Forbes

Last year’s Valentine’s Day ensemble cast charmer, “He’s Just Not That into You” was something of a surprise hit.

The present film is very much cut from the same cloth, but though the list of stars is even lengthier here, and the multi-strand plot of folks both in and out of love tries hard to be funny and ultimately touching, it falls rather short of the other film; and this despite the input of “He’s Just Not That into You” scriptwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein.

Still, I can’t say there isn’t some fun in watching the cast go through its paces. First, there’s Ashston Kutcher who, in the first scene, proposes to his career-centered bedmate Jessica Alba. His best friend (strictly platonic) is played by Jennifer Garner who’s having an affair with doctor Patrick Dempsey.

Kutcher is a florist – working with sidekick George Lopez – so his character becomes, more or less, the linchpin of all the others.

Jamie Foxx is a sportscaster assigned by producer Kathy Bates, much against his will, to come up with a soft Valentine’s Day story, when he really hopes to cover football star Eric Danes’ impending press conference. The latter’s team has lost in the playoffs, and speculation is rife that the quarterback will retire.

Danes’ character is represented by tough agent Queen Latifah and frazzled Valentine’s Day-hating publicist Jessica Biel.

Latifah’s assistant Anne Hathaway moonlights as a phone sex worker, unbeknownst to newish boyfriend Topher Grace, a sweet guy from Muncie, Ind. Hathaway’s antics here are thuddingly unfunny, and the premise distasteful despite the script painting her character as a hard-working gal who simply needs the money.

On the more youthful end of the scale, high schoolers Emma Roberts (Robinson’s babysitter) and Carter Jenkins are foiled in their plan to lose their virginity during lunch hour. And, in the least satisfying plot strand, cheerleader Taylor Swift (the singer, in a less-than-auspicious acting debut) and track star Taylor Lautner are interviewed by a local TV station about the joys of young love.

Furthest down in age range is 10-year-old Bryce Robinson who, throughout the film, harbors a secret Valentine’s Day crush. The long-term marriage of his grandparents Shirley MacLaine and Hector Elizondo is jeopardized when the former fesses up to a long-ago affair. (Their subsequent make-up takes place at an outdoor screening of MacLaine’s actual 1958 film, “Hot Spell,” as her character here is supposed to be a former actress.)

And lastly, Bradley Cooper chats up Army Captain Julia Roberts on a lengthy flight. (Cooper, some may recall, was Roberts’ co-star in their joint Broadway debut, “Three Days of Rain.”) Roberts is en route to an important rendezvous, and Cooper wonders at the identity of the person she’s going to meet.

Kutcher has the most screen time, and he’s a likable presence, while most of the others do the best they can with the material at hand.

Garry Marshall directs these couplings proficiently enough, and Katherine Fugate’s script is not without its occasional charms, but this is pleasant entertainment at best, better on sentiment than laughs.

Everything’s tied up neatly at the end. Not all of the developments are predictable, but the characters you care most about do indeed get their final clinch. As a Valentine’s Day date movie, this passes muster, but only just.

(Rated PG-13 by the MPAA for some sexual material and brief partial nudity)

The Wolfman (Universal Studios)

By Harry Forbes

Benicio Del Toro takes up Lon Chaney Jr.’s mantle in this often hokey but sporadically effective remake of the 1941 original written by Curt Siodmak.

Faithful in spirit if not quite to the letter, director Joe Johnston’s version is that anomaly: an old-fashioned horror film, albeit with more gory bits (generally seen in quickly edited shots) than you’d have seen in Universal Studios’ glory days as the horror film studio.

Now picturesquely set in a murky 1891 Blackmoor (rather than 1940s Wales), beautiful Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt) has written to Lawrence Talbot (Benecio Del Toro) imploring him to aid the search when her fiancée (his brother) goes missing

Talbot is a Shakespearean actor (of all things!), as we see in a short, but tantalizing theatrical sequence where, perhaps mercifully, we don’t actually get to hear Del Toro recite the Bard.

He dutifully returns to the family home, run by his autocratic, derelict and sinister father Sir John (Anthony Hopkins), who rules his dilapidated roost with a mysterious Indian servant Singh (Art Malik) and a growling dog. Lawrence is scarcely in the door, however, when the brother’s mangled body is found.

Rumors spread about a fearsome wolf like creature that comes out when the moon is full. The old fortune teller (a heavily made-up Geraldine Chaplin in Maria Ouspenskaya’s old role) seems to know all about the curse of the werewolf. “Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright…” the old legend goes.

Lawrence is determined to track down his brother’s killer, but one moonlit night, when the creature is unaccountably running amok in the gypsy camp, he himself gets bitten. Sure enough, it’s not long before he's transformed into a hairy beast, courtesy of ace special effects man creature effects designer Rick Baker.
.
But even before this metamorphosis, the frightened and vengeful townspeople, lead by Scotland Yard’s Inspector Aberline (Hugh Weaving) – based, incidentally, on the real inspector who investigated the Jack the Ripper murders -- seem inclined to suspect Lawrence, for no more cogent reasons than he’s the stranger, and if he can play parts like Hamlet, who’s to say he can’t assume more, uh, lupine roles.

Everyone seems to know Lawrence spent a year in a mental asylum as a child after seeing his mother brutally murdered (huh?), after which he was sent to America, presumably losing his English accent, thespian or not, in the process.

At one point, the gypsy woman tells Gwen that a wolfman can only be redeemed by someone who loves him, and you just know Gwen will put that into practice.

At one point, Lawrence ends up back in the asylum, leading to one of the more entertaining sequences in the story. Anthony Sher is the smarmy doctor Dr. Hoenneger who is convinced that his patient is sadly delusional, and he’s lecturing his colleagues in the medical theater, while Lawrence is tied up behind him, the latter begins to transform, much to the horror of the assembled.

I can’t tell much more of the plot without spoiling what little actual suspense there is, but suffice to say, fans of the original film will find several points of deviation from the story as they remember it, though Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self’s script retains many of the character names and basic arc of the original screenplay.

Thrills, such as they are, come mostly in sudden quick-cut jolts of violence, and though the film doesn’t exactly wallow in gore, there’s plenty of blood, severed heads, and the like. There do seem to be some continuity problems, perhaps the result of skittish last-minute editing.

The film has atmosphere, and Danny Elfman’s appropriately pounding score sets the tone.

Hopkins chews the scenery shamelessly, but it’s that kind of role. Matters of accent aside, Del Toro has the right tortured manner for the role. And even in these dubious surroundings, Blunt manages a respectable performance, not far removed from the one she gave in “The Young Victoria.”

And with classy supporting players like Weaving, Sher, Chaplin, and David Schofield as a constable, the production as a whole – dark but lush -- is more than decent, even if more suggestive of the Hammer horror films of the 1950s than the Universal prototypes to which it purports to pay homage.

(Rated R by the MPAA for bloody horror violence and gore.)