Can I praise Idris Elba with one faint damn?
Theres something distant about his performances in the Hollywood franchises.
No denying, Elba gives good mentor, good sidekick, good bad-guy-with-a-secret.
Ilze Kitshoff/Columbia/Sony Pictures
So say this forThe Dark Tower: This is Elbas first true blockbuster showcase.
He plays Roland, a cowboy-knight on a vengeance quest across other worlds than these.
Its a credit to Elba that he gives the character some Man With No Name gruffnessandgenuine unwinking humor.
The performance stands out.
A Tower Stands at the Center of the Universe, opening text informs us.
The Mind of a Child Can Bring it Down.
When you lost your father, your whole world fell apart!
his psychiatrist tells him, so theres your precious backstory.
There wanders Roland, who explains his mission.
Theres a Tower standing at the center of the universe, but you remember that from the opening crawl.
(Everybodys Thanos now.)
The saga gets admirably weirder as it gets deeper, edging into metafiction and memoir.
(When you least expect it, theres a clown.)
Its rich, is what Im saying, and a bit daffy.
King wrote the saga gradually over decades, and circled back for some rewrites.
Which is the fun of it!
Inevitably, King started layering in references to his other work.
Its mostly just bland exposition, but sometimes a real howler slips out.
Everyone in Rolands world calls our planet Keystone Earth, like the Kops.
Oh, like that sword fromTransformers 5?
Bad dialogue, lame plot, fine.
The bigger issue: How could a film with ElbaandMcConaughey have so littleswagger?
Theres your cinema: Darkness, wasteland,gunslinger.
You could watch that tableau for hours: Its a Sergio Leone movie in twelve words.
The filmmakers had to make choices.
So they tossed out the sex, the violence, the cocaine: Fine, thanks, PG-13!
(Notonefinger-eating lobster monster?)
Rarely has bleak grittiness ever looked so utterly inauthentic.
There is one delightful sequence.
Fleeing another muddy action setpiece, Roland follows Jake into New York.
Dizzy from the cross-reality travel, the hero raises his guns toward a man brandishing a knife.
The knifes for chopping food; they landed in a restaurant kitchen.
Later, Roland sips a soda and learns to love sugar.
We found the perfect gunslinger.
Wont someone hey build him a better tower?C
