Byzantium – a film that wants to work on so many levels yet fails to reach any of them in a successful manner. Director Neil Jordan has a long and distinguished career that sadly ranges from the great – Interview with a Vampire to the horrible – Ondine, the horrible can now include this shoddy looking and cold as a vampire's heart effort.
Byzantium wants to be a film where we the audience feel some type of connection to mother daughter vampire duo Clara and Eleanor played with a ranging success rate by Arterton as the doting mother and Ronan as the seriously morbid Eleanor. For the film to achieve its goals it needed these two vamps to be a whole lot more enduring, the film just makes it to hard to care for these two ancient specimens. Byzantium comes off as a "emo" update on the vampire lore.
The main plot point of the film is that poor old Eleanor wants to tell the truth now, it doesn't owe much to have that amount of story in a 2 hour arc. Jordan tries to spice this central conceit up with flashbacks and romantic subplots all of which fall as flat as deflated balloon. Nothing else secondary in film works either from Caleb Landry Jones awkward performance as Frank through to Johnny Lee Miller and Sam Riley's British soldiers.
Byzantium is one of those films where you find it hard to review due to just how lacklustre the whole thing was, when a films not even enjoyable to dismiss there is something bad going on! Like cinema audiences did upon release it's better to not sink your teeth into this laboured cheap looking entry into the every growing catalogue of vampire tales.
1 conveniently placed jumping castle out of 5 For more movie reviews and opinions check out - www.jordanandeddie.wordpress.com
Byzantium wants to be a film where we the audience feel some type of connection to mother daughter vampire duo Clara and Eleanor played with a ranging success rate by Arterton as the doting mother and Ronan as the seriously morbid Eleanor. For the film to achieve its goals it needed these two vamps to be a whole lot more enduring, the film just makes it to hard to care for these two ancient specimens. Byzantium comes off as a "emo" update on the vampire lore.
The main plot point of the film is that poor old Eleanor wants to tell the truth now, it doesn't owe much to have that amount of story in a 2 hour arc. Jordan tries to spice this central conceit up with flashbacks and romantic subplots all of which fall as flat as deflated balloon. Nothing else secondary in film works either from Caleb Landry Jones awkward performance as Frank through to Johnny Lee Miller and Sam Riley's British soldiers.
Byzantium is one of those films where you find it hard to review due to just how lacklustre the whole thing was, when a films not even enjoyable to dismiss there is something bad going on! Like cinema audiences did upon release it's better to not sink your teeth into this laboured cheap looking entry into the every growing catalogue of vampire tales.
1 conveniently placed jumping castle out of 5 For more movie reviews and opinions check out - www.jordanandeddie.wordpress.com