An excellent adaptation

Rating: 9/10 (1 June 2007)

Overall one of the best vampire movies out there.
I just have two complaints:
First, Antonio Banderas is horribly miscast as Armand. The character in the novel was a red-haired teenager (~17 years old) of Russian origin with the face of a "Botecelli angel" who had spent hundreds of years in Rome prior to taking leadership of the Paris coven and the subsequent transformation of it into the Theatre de les Vampires. Maybe Neil Jordan just wanted a well-known playing the part? Making Armand into a tall, black-haired, menacing, Spaniard type with almost indecipherable speech at times due to a thick accent is beyond me. Maybe he wanted to make Armand more frightening in appearance, but that completely goes against one of Armand's chief weapons -- his disarming beauty that conveys a false sense of innocence that allows him to lie so effectively.
Second, reading a previous comment I was stunned to learn that there's an hour more to this movie that has never been released. Someone **please** convince Neil Jordan to make a "director's cut" DVD!!