Perhaps not as powerful as x-ray vision, Brandon Routh is still as perceptive as ever.
When there’s something rotting in seedy New Orleans, Private eye Dylan Dog was forced out of retirement to once again take on the mantle of a constable whose forte’ was investigating supernatural crimes. Very loosely based off the Italian source material, Dead of Night came off as a lighter episode of Supernatural. Brandon Routh played a very smooth, charismatic looking protagonist with a dark past that left him with a constricted affect and brooding good looks. His neurotic man servant played by Being Human’s Sam Huntington provided the campy laughs with girlish cries for help. Anita Briem played the damsel in distress whose father was murdered for a mysterious artifact. All of these ingredients served as Canadian director Kevin Munroe’s undead version of the Maltese Falcon. Unfortunately, Briem never bothered to generate any sense of fear or awe from his creatures. As a result, the stakes were never raised as the audience was led deeper into the story.
The hardest pill to swallow in this film was the inconsistent combat scenes. The narrative was so careful as to point out that vampire blood gave humans the strength of ten men. Essentially, vampires could easily kill a human being yet, a mortal like Dylan Dog not only trades punches with werewolves, vampires, seven foot zombies and a demonic god but he also survived being thrown through more barriers than Mick Foley in a Hell in a Cell match. Hence, the stakes were never raised nor the climax dire and as such, the film’s action was unremarkable.
Without the horror aspect, this film quickly lost any flavor beyond a generic detective story. If I had to rate this film, I’d give it a lite beer on the account that it was stingy with its potential for a truly unique campy horror/adventure film.
Cheers,
Ron
