Not as ridicules as it might sound and not as bad as you might fear.

Rating: 7/10 (26 June 2012)

Forget the premise. It sounds ridicules for just about everyone. Just see this as a period action piece, with some vampire fun thrown into it.
And really, the movie is not as silly and ridicules as you might think. It's not a movie made for laughs necessarily but it's more being a straightforward genre flick, that is trying to be good and entertaining not necessarily just through its main, gimmicky sounding, concept. And it works as such. It's not being a great movie by any means but it at least is being entertaining and maintaining to watch, from about start till finish.
And how many period action movies are out there anyway? The movie deserves some credit for that alone already. And the time period and settings work out well for most part. It's interesting to see vampires and 'mondern' looking type of action taking place during the 19th century. It provides the movie with some pretty unique and often also awesome and thrilling looking moments.
It's definitely true that the movie gets uplifted by the look of it. It has a great visual style to it and the movie truly got skillfully directed by Timur Bekmambetov, who is accustomed to brining visually striking movies to the screen and combining it with some good action and often fine storytelling as well.
The story of the movie is still lacking though. And no, I'm of course not talking about it being ridicules but it steps over a couple of things far too easily and the overall movie feels to me as if it wanted or needed to cover too much ground. There perhaps was enough material in its story for 2 more movies but this movie wanted to do all of it and wrap up everything by the end of it. You could say that the movie its pace feels too fast, which also prevents the movie from ever making any emotional impact on a more dramatic level, or to feel involved with any of its characters. But that's just not this movie. It never really slows down and jumps into its action pretty much right away.
So as a simple, fun, action flick this movie does not disappoint but also the vampire lovers shall most likely not end up feeling disappointed with this movie. It takes a somewhat original take on vampire, in which the vampires get portrayed as true monsters and they get to do plenty of sucking, fighting and killing in this movie.
This is simply and good and fun enough movie to watch, as long as you can take its premise of course.
7/10
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