Tag: Cary Elwes

Blackberry (2023)

Comic-drama about business collapse wants to The Social Network but lacks its deft touch and humanity

Director: Matt Johnson

Cast: Jay Baruchel (Mike Lazaridis), Glenn Howerton (Jim Balsillie), Matt Johnson (Doug Fregin), Rich Sommer (Paul Stannos), Michael Ironside (Charles Purdy), Martin Donovan (Rick Brock), Michelle Giroux (Dara Frankel), Saul Rubinek (John Woodman), Cary Elwes (Carl Yankowski)

“We’ll be the phone people had before they had an iPhone!” I’ve always found successful products that collapsed overnight fascinating. The Blackberry tapped into something people didn’t even realise they wanted: a phone that combines a computer and pager, a status symbol that told everyone you were a Master of the Universe. It was the product everyone wanted – until Steve Jobs announced the iPhone that did everything the Blackberry did better. It should be material for an entertaining film – but Blackberry isn’t quite it.

The film is set up as a classic Faust story. Our Faust is Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel), co-founder and CEO of Research in Motion, a tiny Canadian business with an idea for lovingly crafted cellular devices. Our Mephistopheles is Jim Balsille (Glenn Howerton), an aggressive blowhard businessman who sees the potential – and knows he can sell it the way the timid Lazaridis never could. The angel on Faust’s shoulder is co-founder Doug Fregin (Matt Johnson), who worries the quality-and-fun parts of the business will be sacrificed. Nevertheless, Mephistopheles tempts Faust into partnership and they turn Blackberry into a huge business destined to all fall apart.

Blackberry desperately wants to be The Social Network. What it lacks is both that film’s wit and sense of humanity. It’s a film trying too hard all the time, always straining to be edgy. You can see it in its hand-held, deliberately soft-focus filming style, the camera constantly shifting in and out of blur. (Watching after a while I genuinely started to feel uncomfortable, with a wave of motion sickness nausea.) It goes at everything at one hundred miles an hour, but never manages to make its depiction of a company bought low by arrogance and unwillingness to adapt either funny or moving. It’s aiming to capture the chaos, but instead feels slightly like a student film.

It’s Faustian theme of selling out your principles for glory is just too familiar a story – and the dialogue isn’t funny enough to make the film move with the zingy outrageousness it’s aiming for. It also lacks momentum, the woozy hand-held camerawork actually slowing things down, a very shot lurches into focus. It’s a film crying out for speedy montage and jump-cuts to turn it into a sort of cinematic farce, as the business makes ever more sudden, chancy calls which switch at the mid-point from paying off to unravelling. Instead, it stumbles around like a drunken sailor.

At the centre, Jay Baruchel delivers the most complex work as the awkward and timid Lazaridis who slowly absorbs more and more smart business styling and ruthlessness over the film. But the film fumbles his corruption. His opening mantras – that “good enough is the enemy of humanity”, that Chinese mass production equals low quality because the workers aren’t paid enough to care about the product, that companies should focus on human needs – are all-too obviously dominos set up to get knocked over as Lazaridis gets corrupted and cashes out his principles to turn out exactly the sort of bug-filled mass-produced crap he railed against at the start – but this makes the character himself feel more like a human domino himself rather than living, breathing person.

The other performances all verge on cartoonish. Glenn Howerton channels Gordon Gekko and The Thick of It’s Malcolm Tucker as abusive, sweary, would-be Master-of-the-Universe, only-interested-in-the-bottom-line Jim Balsille. Balsille will do everything Lazaridis won’t do: he’ll cut corners and browbeat his way into meetings. A smarter film would make clear Balsille is in many ways more effective than Lazaridis – that without him Research in Motion would have gone bust years ago. It could also have looked with more sympathy at a guy who so believed in his one shot at glory he re-mortgaged his house to pay for it. But the film leans into Howerton’s skill at explosive outburst and never really humanises him, constantly shoving him into the role of villain.

The film also fails with its more human element. Director Matt Johnnson plays Doug Fregin, Lazaridis’ best friend and business partner. Fregin is set-up as the angel in Lazaridis shoulder, the decent guy against selling out. But Johnson’s performance lacks charm or likeability. Fregin – like many of the other workers of the company – is a geek-bro, his veins pumping with fratboy passions, who thinks the best way to get people working is to throw a string of parties. He’s, in a way, as wrong as Balsille is on what makes long-term business success. Crucially as well, the friendship between him and Lazaridis never really rings true, not least because Fregin browbeats and bullies the timid Lazaridis as much as Balsille does.

With no-one to really care for, the tragedy of this business never hits home. It does capture the sense of desperation as the once-mighty company collapses in the face of Apple – Lazaridis ramming his head into the sand and refusing to believe anyone would want a phone sans keyboard – but it fails to successfully illustrate why an innovator lost his ‘magic’ touch. The script fails to land much of its humour, and tiptoes around positioning Lazaridis as increasingly corrupted, even as starts hiring brash businessmen (epitomised by Michael Ironside’s sergeant-major fixer) to say the thing to his underlings that he’s too scared to. The financial shenanigans that land Blackberry in trouble with the SEC aren’t properly explained, and the actual reasons the iPhone finally put Blackberry in the dust bin of history are hand-waved away (“minutes… data… look just accept it ok”)

Blackberry would, in the end, have been better as an hour-long documentary, with dramatic reconstructions supported by informative talking heads. The film we have fails to deliver on a concept that bursts with comic and dramatic potential.

Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 (2023)

Action and impossible stunts continue to deliver entertainment in Cruise’s running and jumping franchise

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Cast: Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Hayley Atwell (Grace), Ving Rhames (Luther Stickell), Simon Pegg (Benji Dunn), Rebecca Ferguson (Ilsa Faust), Vanessa Kirby (Alanna Mitsopolis), Esai Morales (Gabriel), Pom Klementieff (Paris), Henry Czerny (Eugene Kittridge), Shea Whigham (Jasper Briggs), Cary Elwes (Director Denlinger), Greg Tarzen Davies (Degas), Frederick Schmidt (Zola Mitsopolis), Charles Parnell (NRO Director), Mark Gatiss (NSA Director), Indira Varma (NRO Director)

When they promote Mission: Impossible films, the stunts are front-and-centre. So much so that the film’s life-risking (what else?) stunt of the Cruiser driving a motorbike off a cliff and parachuting to safety was not only in every trailer but they even released a social medial film showing how it was done. Mission: Impossible films are thrill rides – and knowing what you are going to get doesn’t reduce the excitement of getting it. There’s plenty of excitement in Dead Reckoning Part 1 but that desire to entertain doesn’t always work when the film tries to tackle more emotional content.

Dead Reckoning starts, Hunt for Red October-like, with the sinking of a radar-invisible Russian sub (there is even a neat twist on that film’s switch from Russian to English). The disaster is caused by its AI supercomputer, known as The Entity. While intelligence agencies compete to control it, the Entity uses its ability to predict every outcome to plot world domination. The only threat it predicts? Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) of course. Ethan will stop at nothing to destroy this threat, in a country-hopping adventure with his regular team (Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg and Rebecca Ferguson) that rotates around mysterious thief Grace (Hayley Atwell) and a ruthless old enemy of Ethan’s, Gabriel (Esai Morales).

Dead Reckoning is, of course, huge fun. Shot over years, due to Covid (responsible for its budget ballooning to an eye watering $300 million) it never lets events go on too long without throwing in a twist and turn filled set-piece which plays off its lead characters’ skill under pressure. Despite the vast numbers of set-pieces, you rarely shift in your seat, because each is paced to perfection with just the right balance between tension and wit. That long shooting process also means its villainous AI plotline (clearly the makers binged on AI drama Person of Interest beforehand) seems zeitgeist rather than something from science fiction.

The film is a masterclass in shooting action. The recent Indiana Jones film threw in a seemingly never-ending three-way car chase. Dead Reckoning probably dedicates more time to its jaunt through the streets of Rome, but it’s always clever enough to keep shifting gears. We go from shoot-out, to Cruise and Atwell handcuffed together and awkwardly sharing the driving, to switching of cars (a ludicrous yellow mini which even Ethan can’t work out, impotently turning the windscreen wipers on and off), pratfall spins down the Spanish steps, all with a free-wheeling sense of improvisational fun that only comes from months of careful storyboarding and determination to never settle for “things move fast until they stop”.

Dead Reckoning is a reminder that no-one since Buster Keaton puts themselves through as much as Cruise does (it seems fitting the finale builds towards the biggest train crash since The General). It’s Cruise’s USP: he does it for real. Even at 60 he pushes himself in the way few actors have ever done. Run full-pelt through the streets of Venice? Climb along the roof of a speeding train? Fight two actors half his age in a cramped corridor? You can sort of understand why the film doesn’t shirk on dialogue paying tribute to Cruise/Ethan’s superhuman determination and endurance (and the film is a further reminder Ethan’s only flaw is caring too damn much).

Let’s not forget also Cruise pretty much produces and co-directs these missions. Dead Reckoning is a triumph of the producer’s art – McQuarrie and Cruise are practised experts at pulling together locations, resources and expertise. They are equally ace at assembling tense sequences that don’t involve death-defying stunts. A first act cat-and-mouse chase around a huge Dubai airport sees Cruise tracking Atwell, while dodging a US government team sent to capture him, while Pegg hunts for a suspicious bag, while Cruise is also tracked by Morales. None of this involves stunt work (although Cruise and Atwell both learned how to perform sleight-of-hand tricks in camera) just timing and an ability to constantly present events in a dynamic way. This is consummate box-office ride assembly, marshalled to perfection with all the skill of expert showmen.

The set pieces are so gripping, it sometimes draws your attention a little bit too much to how perfunctory all the joins can be. A host of British actors (Gatiss, Varma and rent-a-villain Cary Elwes) gather in a room to throw plot statements at each other. The conversations between the team are often dominated by the narrative need to establish who will go where and why. The script has a tendency to demonstrate how people feel by having them bluntly state it (“My friends matter more to me than anyone!”). When trying to be human, rather than a thrill ride, it can stumble.

It’s perhaps why the moments that aim for tragedy feel like they land slightly awkwardly, as if you aren’t quite sure how sad you should be feeling. Dead Reckoning throws in an emotional mid-act that strains for a depth a film primarily designed to entertain popcorn munchers, isn’t quite able to deliver on. Put simply, the film can’t afford to have Ethan get caught up in grief when ten minutes later we need an exasperated Cruise to jump off a mountain. This ride don’t stop for anyone.

The film also suffers from the characters spending the entire runtime chasing a mysterious key which they have no idea the purpose of, but the audience has had explained to us in that opening Russian prologue. This is a series that thrives best on carefully concealing things from us, on the characters having a card or two up their sleeves. It somehow doesn’t quite work that we are more aware of the bigger picture than the characters. It makes Dead Reckoning feel like an extended opening act.

But this ride is fun enough for now. Atwell is charming, funny and has superb chemistry with Cruise; Morales is a chillingly arrogant villain, Klementieff enigmatically vicious as a near-wordless henchman. Whigam and Davies are good fun as contrasting agents vainly chasing the uncatchable Ethan. And above them all is Cruise: jumping, running, diving, punching and generally putting life-and-limb on the line, all to entertain us. Maybe he is a bit mad, but it’s impossible not to applaud him.

Twister (1996)

Cardboard characters try not to get blown away in this extremely silly disaster movie

Director: Jan de Bont

Cast: Helen Hunt (Dr Jo Harding), Bill Paxton (Dr Bill Harding), Jami Gertz (Dr Melissa Reeves), Cary Elwes (Dr Jonas Miller), Lois Smith (Aung Meg Greene), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Dusty Davis), Alan Ruck (“Rabbit” Nurick), Sean Whalen (Allan Sanders), Todd Field (“Beltzer” Lewis), Wendle Josepher (Haynes), Jeremy Davies (Brian Laurence), Joey Slotnick (Joey), Zach Grenier (Eddie)

In 1996 Twister blew through cinema screens with a vengeance, becoming the second most biggest hit of the year. Yes, you read that right. Stop me if I am wrong, but has anyone thought about, even for a second, this bog-standard disaster film since? Staffed almost exclusively by characters so lightweight a puff of wind would blow them away, never mind a tornado, the whole thing is full of sound and fury and signifies absolutely nothing at all.

Drs Jo (Helen Hunt) and Bill Harding (Bill Paxton) are trying to get divorced. He’s finally had enough of risking his neck on their joint passion for storm-chasing, deciding to jack it in for a lucrative life on the media circuit and marriage to relationship therapist Dr Melissa Reeves (Jami Gertz). He arrives in Oklahoma to get Jo to sign the divorce papers – but doncha know it, he gets sucked in to “one more job”, to road-test the storm measurement doo-hickey device he and Jo dreamed of making but she’s actually built. And, handily, one of those pesky twisters is on the way.

The doo-hickey – I’m really not sure what it’s meant to do – is the sort of ludicrous scientific device that only exists in the movies. It’s basically a huge metal cauldron full of marbles that needs to be placed in the path of a twister. It’s also – in a terrible design flaw – hugely fragile and unstable, constantly falling over at the worst possible time. There are apparently three prototypes, of decreasing quality, each a back-up of the one before – you have one guess as to how many of these they burn through in the film.

In fact, you can pretty much one guess almost everything that might happen. Will Jo finally come-to-terms with the death of her father in a storm? (That’s right – she has a “I’m passionate and obsessed because a twister killed my dad” backstory!) Will Bill realise Jo is the one for him, not fish-out-of-water big-city-girl Mel? Will Cary Elwes’ lip-smacking, moustachio-curling copyright-stealing storm expert get his (fatal) comeuppance? Will sweet Aunt Meg (and her dog) survive her tussle with the storm? That “it’s almost never happened” super-storm they talk about at the start of the film – do you think it’s possible our heroes will find themselves in the middle of it before the end?

All of this is shuffled in a film with a hideously over-loaded deck. Jo’s team consists of around eight assistants, none of whom have so much as a character between them. They are a feeble collection of archetypes: the geek, the shy one, the techie, the religious one and the loud-mouthed one (a role of flamboyant indignity for Philip Seymour Hoffman, yet to be recognised as a great actor and instead relegated to feeble comic relief roles). But then it’s not like the leads are that interesting either: she’s committed, passionate but gosh-darn-it puts the storm before her personal life. He’s trying to move on but doncha-know-it he’s just lying to himself that he doesn’t love the storm.

In fact, as this rather smug ex-couple riffed on in-jokes, storm facts and their shared love for their doo-hickey made of marbles I felt rather sorry for Mel. Obviously, we are meant to scorn Mel, with her hand-wringing profession of counsellor (as opposed to the macho jobs of Bill and Jo) and her reluctance to run into a massive twister. Actually, I think she’s rather sensible. Bill and Jo are both clearly insane and take suicidal risks. She puts up with her fiancé flirting with his ex far longer than most of us would and she is hugely patient with the polite scorn she’s treated with by Jo’s rag-tag band of tedious risk-taking geeks playing at being alphas. She hangs around far longer than anyone else would do, before departing after maturely and sensibly telling Bill he should stick with his first two loves (Jo and storms – maybe not in that order).

People aren’t watching these films for the character or plot though – just as well as the film doesn’t really have either – but the special effects. These are impressive, I suppose, as the storm rips through sets, throws CGI buildings around and generally makes for loud and impressive noise. The film has a sort of goofy wit at times – at one point a CGI cow is blown through the sky in front of the Hardings, mooing rather sadly.

There are some decent set-pieces, even though they are basically all the same set-piece repeated over and over again at a different scale (first the storm blows over a car, then a building, then a village, then most of a town while our heroes duck and cover their heads). Lots of it was done with practical effects, shot with an alarming lack of regard for safety – Hunt got an infection from being flung into a drain and she and Paxton were temporarily blinded by a burst of artificial lightning.

De Bont directs all this with a personality-free competence. The film is at absolute best less than half as good as his first film, Speed – and de Bont’s subsequent film, The Haunting, would be half as good again in a career of ever-diminishing returns. Twister offers nothing new or even particularly interesting, other than some wind special effects that are of passing curiosity value but nothing else. It’s almost quaint that, in 1996, this was seen as something earth-shatteringly impressive. Now it’s as fearsome a burst of raw natural power as a fart.

Glory (1989)

Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington are among the first black American soldier in Glory

Director: Edward Zwick

Cast: Matthew Broderick (Colonel Robert Gould Shaw), Denzel Washington (Pvt Silas Trip), Cary Elwes (Major Cabot Forbes), Morgan Freeman (Sgt Major John Rawlins), Andre Braugher (Cpl Thomas Searles), Jihmi Kennedy (Pt Jupiter Sharts), Cliff De Young (Colonel James Montgomery), Alan North (Governor John Albion Andrew), John Finn (Sgt Mulcahy), Bob Gunton (General Charles Garrison Harker), Jay O Sanders (General George Crockett Strong)

The American Civil War started over slavery, but it took a long time for either side to admit it was a fight about slavery. Racism abounded on both sides, and it was a fight in which black Americans may have been the subject, but were rarely invited to join. Glory covers this point of history, and specifically the first all-black regiment and its struggle to be recognised as equal to the other regiments in the army.

Wounded at the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick) returns home to Massachusetts and accepts command of the first all-black regiment, which is currently being raised by abolitionists in the state. With his friend Cabot Forbes (Cary Elwes) as second-in-command (no one was progressive enough to actually allow black officers for the regiment), he recruits a wide range of black Americans, from free-man and bookish intellectual Thomas Searles (Andre Braugher) – an old friend of Robert and Cabot – to former slaves such as the wise John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman) and the resentful Silas Trip (Denzel Washington). Training is a struggle, with the army denying the regiment supplies and support, and it’s an equal struggle when they reach the front line to be recognised for duties other than looting and latrine digging. Will the Massachusetts 54^thbe given the chance to prove itself in the front line – and establish a black man can fight as hard and bravely as a white man can?

Edward Zwick’s beautifully filmed, carefully re-created historical epic set the tone for much of his future career. It’s an often overly-sentimental film straining for a very self-conscious sense of importance, weighed down by the pride at the “message” it is carrying. It often does hit the mark with presenting scenes that carry emotional force – but then seeing as it treats nearly every scene as being a “moment” that should move us (with James Horner’s choral manipulation working double time to get us experiencing feelings), it’s no wonder that it succeeds sometimes.

Which is not to say the message it presents isn’t an important one. Black Americans have often been pushed into the margins of American Civil War history. Or worst of all presented as the victims, reliant on the courage and bravery of the abolitionists of the North to save them from slavery in the South. Until Glory it was very rare for anything to push their stories front and centre – or to tell a story where former slaves were allowed to fight their own battles and choose their own destinies.

It’s one of the strongest marks of the film: these are soldiers unlike any other, who enter battles with less concern about their own survival, and more about having the chance to live as freemen and to make a mark on the world. To show that they, and people like them, could do just as a white man could do. And if they had to die to do that, better to live a day on their feet as freemen then a lifetime on their knees. It’s the principle emotional message of the film, and something Zwick translates with some skill, even if he frequently overeggs the pudding while doing so.

However, with such a strong message, it’s a shame so much of the film is filtered through the experience of its white lead character. For many of the films of the 80s and 90s dealing with these issues – Cry Freedom, the Steve Biko biopic, with Biko as a supporting character to his white South African journalist friend, being perhaps the key example – it was essential to have a white man at the centre, as if worried that audiences couldn’t understand the story they were seeing unless they had it filtered through the perception of someone who looks a bit more like them.

Matthew Broderick takes on the lead role here of Shaw – with the film giving a significant slice of its running time to its coming-of-age theme of Shaw learning to become a leader of men – and while the character is meant to be callow and an unlikely Colonel, it doesn’t help that Broderick lacks the charisma for the part. Perhaps he is a little too lightweight an actor for such an enterprise, for a film that demands greater force of character (you can imagine Tom Cruise doing a much finer job in the role). Similarly, the familiar beats of a young man learning how to lead feel trivial compared to the life-and-death issues facing his soldiers.

But too often Zwick’s film returns us to Shaw’s point-of-view, the narrative filtering so much of the action through his perceptions and decisions that the black soldiers become supporting actors in their own stories. Broderick is not helped by the soldiers being played by some of the finest American actors of the last 30 years. Braugher is fabulous in the thankless role of the bookish man who must grow a spine. Morgan Freeman established a persona – the wise and level headed older man, who will not let hate and fury define his life and his choices – that would last him for the rest of his career, and is superb (his Oscar nomination for Driving Miss Daisy is probably the only thing that led to him not getting a nod for this film).

Denzel Washington took home an Oscar as the bitter, angry Trip – and it’s the sort of role an actor seizes with relish. Washington fills every frame with his rage at the system, his inarticulate, indiscriminate anger lashing out in every direction. It’s the fury of a man who has had all his choices taken from him in life, and would rather destroy things than run the risk of allowing himself to become committed to something, or form a bond. Washington probably won the Oscar alone for the astonishing scene where he silently, defiantly accepts a whipping (on a body covered with scars) for missing a curfew. He’s an elemental force of nature in the film.

There is plenty of strong stuff in Zwick’s work, but the film itself overplays its hand frequently. Moments of emotion are played so heavily to the hilt they sometimes fail to have an impact. It wants you to know at every turn that you are watching a film with an important social message – and the speechifying at points put into the mouths of the characters runs dry. While superbly made – veteran photographer Freddie Francis’ work is beautiful (and Oscar winning) – it’s a heavy-handed, overly pleased with itself film that knows all too well that it is about an important subject. While sometimes it lands – often in quieter moments, particularly those where Freeman and Washington are allowed to simply be human without overindulgent music cues hammering home the emotions – at others it comes across as too much.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Gary Oldman prowls the night as Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Cast: Gary Oldman (Count Dracula), Winona Ryder (Mina Murray), Anthony Hopkins (Professor Abraham van Helsing), Keanu Reeves (Jonathan Harker), Richard E. Grant (Dr Jack Seward), Cary Elwes (Lord Arthur Holmwood), Billy Campbell (Quincy P Morris), Sadie Frost (Lucy Westenra), Tom Waits (Renfield)

In the 90s Francis Ford Coppola planned a series of high Gothic films of classic monster stories, kick starting the plans with his own production of Dracula (the only other film that came of this was Kenneth Branagh’s equally operatically overblown Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein). Going back to the story of the original novel (more or less), Coppola presented a deliberately high-intensity, theatrical, over-the-top version of Stoker’s tale that becomes as overbearing as it is visually impressive.

In 1462 Vlad the Impaler (Gary Oldman) renounces God and becomes Dracula, after false news of his death leads to his wife (Winona Ryder) committing suicide and being damned by the church. Over four hundred years later, the immortal vampire Dracula plans to travel to England, with his plans unwittingly aided by his solicitor Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves). His interests are peaked all the more when he sees a picture of Harker’s fiancée Mina (Winona Ryder again) – the reincarnation of his dead wife. Dracula heads to England, preying on Mina’s friend Lucy (Sadie Frost) leading to an alliance of Lucy and Mina’s friend, led by Professor van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) to combat Dracula’s villainy and save Mina from her own dark temptations to join the besotted Vampire.

Coppola’s film doubles down on Gothic romance, thundering through the action with everything dialled up to 11. The (rather good) score hammers home every beat, the camera swoops and zooms through a parade of tricks, wipes and dynamic angles with cross fades frequently throwing two images on screen at the same time. It makes for a sensual – in more ways than one – overload, but also a rather oppressive viewing experience, with no respite or sense of calm but every single scene delivered with stomach churning acceleration.

It’s a film directed with a deliberate operatic style, that celebrates (and makes no attempt to hide) its set-based theatricality. The opening sequence sets the tone with its Kurosawa inspired costumes in front of an Excalibur style blood-red sky, with battle scenes (and impalings) staged as an elaborate puppet show. Oldman – with a hammy Eastern European accent that you could wade through like treacle – then rages and roars over his wives crumpled body, stabbing a cross that leaks blood all while images are cross-cut showing his wives demise and the beginnings of his own monstrous transformation. The film doesn’t ease up from there.

To be honest Coppola massively over-eggs the pudding, producing an over-blown monstrosity of a film that shouts and shouts and shouts and drains all subtlety from every frame. In particular the sexual undertones of Vampirism – and the harsh male judgement of female sexuality – that the book explores are placed unsubtly front and centre. Every vampire attack is presented as a positive ravishing, Frost and Ryder writhing orgasmically (poor Frost has to undergo the indignity of being humped and bitten by a Dracula in part human-part wolf form) while boobs are left on display after every single assault. From an early scenes that sees Lucy and Mina gawping at a pornographically illustrated Arabian Nights, we are left in no doubt that IT’S ABOUT SEX YOU KNOW.

Coppola shows no restraint at all in his directing, which leaves nothing to the imagination, and ends up leaving the actors adrift between a film that is part serious attempt to film the book and part ludicrous bodice ripper, like the cheapest 60s salacious horror film from the worst excesses of Hammer.

It certainly leaves the actors adrift. Oldman gives it a go with gusto, even if he seems completely lost as to what tone this character should hit (is he a monster, a lost soul, a conflicted lover, a megalomaniac – who knows?). Anthony Hopkins channels Orson Welles with the sort of ham that was to become more-and-more his go to in later years. Winona Ryder does her best with a role that oscillates wildly between Good Girl and Minx. She’s saddled with an English accent, which restrains like a straitjacket. Tom Waits has fun as the insane Renfield (here imprisoned in a crazy asylum that resembles a medieval dungeon).

The rest of the performances are pretty much abysmal. Poor Keanu Reeves is left ruthlessly exposed, horrendously miscast as a stiff-upper lip English lawyer in a performance that surely goes down somewhere in history as one of the worst ever. His acting here would barely scrap by in a school play, his delivery of the dialogue wooden beyond belief and some talcum powder added to his hair for the film’s later sections only makes him look ridiculous. Reeves is a decent performer in the right role, but he was never worst case than this. But then the rest of the cast are pretty much just as bad: Frost is out-right awful, hopelessly unable to make Lucy anything other than a slut, while Grant, Campbell and Elwes are all wooden and dull to a man.

The film does get some points for reverting closer to the plot of the book – unlike many versions – although the addition of the love story between Dracula and Mina is marred by tonal problems and the utter lack of chemistry between Oldman and Ryder (they famously fell out on set and the film never recovers). Coppola directs the film with no discipline at all, and no sense of balance between spectacle and story. While it has many merits in its design – it won no less than three Oscars and the costumes, make-up for Oldman and much of its look and style are flawless – it’s basically a pretty over-bearing and dreadful film that shouts at the viewer so long and so hard that it becomes easier in the end to laugh at it rather than with it. A sad misfire.