A surprisingly short ‘Dark Tower’ knows who’s King
When it comes to tales of terror and fantasy, you never can count Stephen King out.
Not only is he one of the most reliable names in those genres printwise, but for a while, he was a cottage industry for the movies. A film based on one of his tales was being released every other month, or so it seemed.
He’s now back in the movie game with “The Dark Tower,” a surprisingly tidy tale for something that’s based on a series of seven books. The picture only deals with the original story, presumably setting the stage for a number of sequels, as Idris Elba plays a gunslinger whose world – known as Mid-World – is on the brink of destruction.
A villain in all-black clothing (Matthew McConaughey) evidently has a lot to do with the pending disaster, and the pursuit of him goes back and forth between Mid-World and the contemporary Earth we know. You can liken that premise to “Stargate,” but wizards and vampires also are mixed in here, and with a slant that is distinctly Stephen King’s.
A psychically gifted youngster (played by Tom Taylor) also is a major figure here ... and if nothing else tells you that you’re on King’s turf, that will. Think of Sissy Spacek in “Carrie” or Drew Barrymore in “Firestarter,” or even the child in “The Shining,” and you’ll recognize it as a very familiar element of King’s works.
Elba makes an expectedly sturdy hero, and for McConaughey, this is yet another chance to go “character actor” with many of the traits that made him a leading man, but inverted here. His swagger is meant to be a cliche rather than a magnet for the opposite gender, and it’s actually pretty amusing to observe.
As for the somewhat otherworldly setting, when it comes to inventing new environments for audiences to embrace, King has a long-standing good will ... whereas someone like director Luc Besson, who tried that recently with “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” doesn’t have that track record.