"The Dark Tower" review

SONY! STOP! MAKING! MOVIES!

Loosely based on Stephen King’s western infused fantasy epic about a wandering gunslinger’s search for a construct that haunts his dreams, “The Dark Tower” tells the story of a teenage boy coping with the death of his father and strained relationship with his mother when he has vivid dreams of a fantasy world that he insists is real.

When the bad guys from his dreams come to his home in order to kidnap him, the kid, Jake Chambers, runs away to be saved by the gunslinger of his visions, joining him in a quest to save The Dark Tower from the evil man in black played by Matthew McConaughey.

If there sounds like there’s something of a disconnect between the synopsis of the film and the material being pulled from than fear not dear reader, not only are you sane but you’ve been clued into one of the many reasons why “The Dark Tower” doesn’t work as a movie.

The sprawling length, rich mythology, detailed settings, and compelling characters of “The Dark Tower” series have rightfully garnered favorable attention amongst critics and readers of King’s work, with many considering it to be his opus. What the 2 hour commercial producing, creatively bankrupt shill of a studio, Sony seems to have missed however is that “The Dark Tower” really isn’t a story with mainstream appeal.

The books follow the adventures of the wandering Gunslinger Roland Deschain, who carries with him a burdening past of loss and tragedy in search of the titular Dark Tower, a construct believed to be the center of all existence that no mortal has ever reached and lived to relay what lies within it.

His journey is wrought with time travel, dimension hopping, monster invasions and a plethora of disasters that never end well meant to communicate to him that his obsessive journey to discover the Tower at any cost may be to the detriment of himself and others around him. He has to sacrifice comfort, friends, and love for a destination that telegraphs its own thankless nature and uses it as a frame to study his own development as a human being while leading him into dangers that he could cause if he doesn’t realize what the real worth of life is.

“The Dark Tower” is incredibly dense, tragic, philosophical, metaphysical and stretching beyond the power of its own narrative, its setting and lore basically serve as the metatextual backbone for a multiverse encompassing every single one of Stephen Kings’s works from the horrors to the sci-fi and dramas.

This was never going to attract the mainstream audience necessary to produce a big budget feature.

So how does Sony attempt to split the difference? By essentially adapting all of the fat and trimmings of “The Dark Tower” that are contextually cool but ultimately worthless without the meaningful narrative of a man’s self-torturing obsession to bind it all together well.

All of those details in question, such as the establishment of the multiverse, The Man in Black’s motives and resources, Roland Descain’s history as a gunslinging knight errant, and even the actual nature of the Tower itself are instead repurposed as invasive threats to the simple life of a kid who just wants to survive long enough to achieve normalcy after completing his wish fulfillment fantasy of an adventure.

So there answer to making “The Dark Tower” more accessible was to basically turn the movie into “Beast Master 2.”

Rather than making the narrative feel more relatable however, what you’re ultimately left with is a badly edited, poorly written, and terribly executed drama about a boy that’s smart enough to figure out that big things are coming but apparently too dumb to realize that telling people that your dreams of a fantasy apocalypse and monster slaying gunslingers are real will lead to the tangible consequences of people believing that you’re crazy and judging you as such.

This narrative would be painful enough on its own but then it has to regularly remind you that you’re stuck with it for the entire duration of the movie instead of watching a full feature about the Gunslingers of Gilead and Roland’s history of conflict with The Man in Black, which are far more interesting than Jake’s parental issues and wouldn’t be putting so much talent to waste.

Idris Elba still would never have made my casting shortlist for Roland but when he’s allowed to really stretch his legs, he reminds the audience that he probably has enough charisma to make a romantic comedy with a broomstick that would be one of the best films of the year. McConaughey meanwhile owns the show just about every time he’s on screen despite being the display point of some of the worst writing of the movie in action. His role is basically boiled down to that of a Saturday morning cartoon villain but his conviction to the role along with a certain level of hamminess in his approach keep it a cringe worthy delight to watch.

Even the kid playing Jake is pretty good in the role that he is given. Unfortunately he’s tasked with carrying a production that neither he nor his character should be holding up alone.

Just about the only thing that “The Dark Tower” does right is managing a production that visually brings to life a world and tale that could have been unique and powerful but never materializes. After being micromanaged into oblivion by executives that have clearly lost any sense of wonder in narrative in favor of focus tests and market driven commerce, what your left with is a hollow shell of a story layered in metaphysical exploration, philosophical musings, and a cast of characters as richly detailed and realized as the history of their fictional reality that is stripped of all symbolism, scope and depth.

And all of this is before the action gets brought back to Earth for a healthy dosage of out of place ‘fish out of water’ humor and product placement galore, at which point the movie goes into a full nose dive before ending at a mercifully short 90 minutes.

The final product feels like a generic YA novel adaptation for an audience that wouldn’t appreciate the stories high concepts or are outright too young for its source material in question, which is rife with violence, language, gore, and even sex, occasionally but unapologetically.

In trying to open its doors to everybody beyond its base of fantasy fans, “The Dark Tower” ultimately decays into a film made for nobody but the studio executives hoping to eek out a profit on its moderately tame budget based on public curiosity.

As a film on its own, the occasionally cool action set piece and solid visual design could make it a mild curiosity as a DVD rental if you have nothing else to watch. An accurate adaptation of one of the more unique literary fantasies of recent years however, this couldn’t be any further from.

4 Songs of Susannah out of 10