The one and only... Oldman!

Rating: 8/10 (27 October 2005)

Gary Oldman IS Dracula. No one before or after even comes close to the brilliance with which Oldman plays the title character. As one of too few I have seen the original Dracula and therefore I have the basis for a comparison and Oldman is far superior but as it is with many of these characters that multiple actors have played the first one is often lauded as being the one and only. This is something I don't understand. People say that Connery was the best to play Bond. Fair enough but he was also the best actor to ever play Bond and the same could be said in the case of Oldman playing Dracula. Bela Lugosi was chosen because of his accent and appearance but in the case of Oldman its pure talent.
Overall the acting in the film is very good. I cannot praise Oldman enough and I simply do not understand he did not even receive an Oscar nomination for the film. His voice and his ability to use different accents (which he does in almost every film I've seen him in) is quite unique and his grasp of timing, posture and facial expressions makes him one of my favorite actors. Winona Ryder is good as well but her performance pales in the scenes she has with Oldman who steals them. Keanu Reeves isn't particularly good but fortunately he isn't in the film enough to ruin anything. The only actor who can match the brilliance of Oldman is the master character actor Anthony Hopkins who like Oldman steals every scene he is in. He said he took the role to do something different from his Hannibal Lecter character and prove his versatility and he does for Abraham Van Helsing is one of the most interesting and weird characters of his career. The supporting cast is pretty good. Nothing stand out but decent.
The film's visual style is very unique and gives off a very unique atmosphere which is both tense and some times frightening at the same time. Mostly though the visual style is just fake and weird and oddly this suits the film very well but it is also a weakness because sometimes its just a little too weird and in those scenes the film lost me only to bring me back again later. I don't blame the actors for my sporadic loss of interest but the direction which is sometimes stellar and sometimes shaky but overall satisfactory. The music and general sound are, like the visual elements, different and atmospheric and very generally very well done.
The story is well told. The film takes its time and builds up the characters in a satisfactory manner and is very good at building up tension to the ending. The ending seems a bit rushed though and is not completely climactic and it is in fact only because of the rushed ending that I do not give this film a 9 because otherwise the style, acting and general storytelling is very well done. All in all Dracula is a very good, entertaining film. It doesn't rival other films that the director has done but it is nevertheless a good interpretation of the book.
8/10