"Go to Hell!"
"Been there."
Finally, a big screen version of Stephen King's magnum opus makes it into cinemas after various false starts, and it is a slightly odd film. It has all the ingredients to work successfully, yet it never really catches fire, even with a fairly spirited final act. Clearly distilled into a surprisingly brief 95 minutes from part of King's sprawling tale, it does feel familiarly Stephen King, yet in movie terms it suffers two notable issues. Firstly, the characters are very thinly drawn, even though Matthew McConaughey finds a malevolent stillness in the Man In Black, Idris Elba brings an appropriate world-weary gravitas to The Gunslinger (and is fun in the fish-out-of-water scenes on Earth in a Thor-like way), and even young Tom Taylor (yes, from TV's Doctor Foster) is acceptable as the psychic-powered Jake. Secondly, as a 12A, it really does not securely target an audience: too violent for the children, too male-centric and with a slightly young protagonist for today's YA audience (which it very often feels it is pitching along the lines of The Mortal Instruments and Divergent, but without the romantic angle), and too bland for adults. The blending of western and fantasy tropes works visually, and yet often there is very little that could not be seen in an episode of TV's Stargate. With a pared-back storyline, thin characters and a moderate budget, this take on The Dark Tower works but in a limited way, yet it does world-build appropriately for the follow-up that we might not get to see, if early American box-office indications are anything to go by.
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