Movie Review: The Dark Tower 2017

It is 2017, and Hollywood's ratio of good to bad Stephen King film adaptations is 9:15. The Dark Tower changed it to 9:16.

The first of two major Stephen King adaptations this year, The Dark Tower finally brings the adaptation that many fans of King’s book series have wanted for a long time. But with want comes expectation, and it remained a mystery for quite a while whether this incarnation would meet them. With two talented, charismatic leads and backed by the rich source material, The Dark Tower has all the makings of a good film, and yet it just can’t quite get over the hill.

Hey, I’m digging through the bottom of the barrel to compliment this movie so here are some actual genuine good aspects of the film. The thing that I enjoy about the movie is when Roland [The Gunslinger] travels to Earth for the first time. It's naturally funny when a person of another dimension travel to Earth cause that allows humor to be incorporated. Granted the humor is very reminiscent of Thor, but there is one joke that I received a big belly laugh from. Since the actor who plays our lead protagonist is known for playing Heimdall in Thor, it feels a bit cheated.

The Plot

Roland Deschain (Idris Elba), the last Gunslinger, is locked in an eternal battle with Walter O'Dim (Matthew McConaughey), also known as the Man in Black. The Gunslinger must prevent the Man in Black from toppling the Dark Tower, the key that holds the universe together. With the fate of worlds at stake, two men collide in the ultimate battle between good and evil.

The biggest mystery of The Dark Tower is how the filmmakers have seemingly taken a straight-forward story and not executed anything appropriately. To make a sequel to the lengthy book series into a 95-minute film requires a lot of cramming of exposition and mythology with little regard to if it makes sense for the casual audience members.

Like maybe not suck the charisma completely out of your two lead actors? Both are proven commodities and extremely talented, yet they feel squandered here. The biggest flaw in The Dark Tower is the studio seemingly cutting its legs off before it could ever start running. The short run time has been discussed, but another big mistake is to short change the film by giving this supposed fantasy western epic a smaller budget.

It shows too, in the spotty CGI and the boring action scenes that are nothing more than a few cool moments of Idris Elba pointing and shooting. This is without a doubt a film that could’ve benefited from a grand scale film that the studio didn’t seem interested in making.

Overall, The Dark Tower is a boring mess of a film that never quite grasped what it wanted to be. The decent performances from the two hampered leads are not enough to look past the muddled story and uninteresting characters.

Review: ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆