Palatable

Rating: 7/10 (8 August 2013)

As a historian it is hard for me to like this movie, but I did find this an enjoyable movie. Not as good as Bram Stoker's Dracula with Gary Oldman, but still a pretty good vampire movie. The action is pretty good, the vampire hunting is excellent.
The pace of this movie pretty fast as we begin our story when Abraham loses his mother. She was poisoned by a Vampire named Barts. His father makes him promise not to go after Barts. Abraham promises but only keeps this promise until his father passes away.
The movie is different from the book as there are many things that have been changed. There is no mention of Abraham Lincoln's grandfather being killed by vampires. There is no mention of Anne Rutledge, although in the book she plays a major role but is killed in the same manner as Abraham's mother. Willie Lincoln's death in the movie is attributed to the same sickness that killed his grandmother.
Another scene that should have been in this movie was that John Wilkes Booth had been turned into a vampire. Abraham Lincoln was shot and his friend Henry turned him into a vampire instead of letting Lincoln die. However, Lincoln was turned at a time when nobody was around so everyone thought he was still dead.
The novel idea that Abraham Lincoln was a vampire hunter and had killed several vampires over the years is a pretty good idea. It is an amazing twist that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves because the vampires used slaves as food. It was not only humans that fought on the side of the south but vampires as well.
As a movie based on a book that is complete fiction wrapped around historical fact this is a very good movie. I would give this a 7 out of 10 stars, simply because the action and story is fairly well thought out. Timur Bekmambetov did a very good job directing this movie, and adapting it from the book of the same name. But, as a historian, I can't bring myself to like this movie too much.